Water Gardening: What kind of wild life do you have living in your pond(s)?, 0 by lmelling

lmelling wrote:
Sometimes when the pond first thaws we get unwelcome visitors such as (one year) a mink who ate all my fish. In spring we get the spring peepers and the woodfrogs that come out and cackle for us (they sound like chickens!!! - no kidding!). About May the toads appear with their whistle-songs, Then we get 15 or 20 green frogs that come out of their hidey holes and take up their places and start to strum (like banjo's) - they stay all summer until the cold sets in, so between the lot we have a symphony out there starting about late march or early april depending on the weather.

When warm weather hits we've got a wide variety of dragonflies (my favorite), hummingbird moths, hummingbirds (themselves) - who like the flowers around the pond and garden; a newt or two and various tadpoles in the process of turning into young frogs. We also have a great blue heron who is an unwelcome guest, so we use a decoy (works most of the summer). Lots of goldfish (Koi are too expensive and I'm tired of raising a koi until he/she is 8 or 10" long just to feed the heron).

The first year we had the pond, neighbor kids brought us a box turtle...he stayed about 2 days and left. The frogs see to it that the mosquitoes aren't a problem, in fact one or two set up in a water tub outside my back door and keep that clean as well - what the frogs and toads don't get, the bats do.

In it's season, we usually see a Luna Moth or two (unbelieveably beautiful) and an assortment of plain and unusual, large and small moths. Then there's the deer, rabbits, raccoons - OH, and an occasional foster Golden Retriever taking a swim in the pond.