When I was a girl we had this huge pond behind us. You could hear them frogs croaking all the way up through the corn fields. Well them there frogs were also good eating...lol
If you build it… they will come!
should be hearing the spring peepers any day now!
Marie, you ate frog legs or the entire frog.
The legs...lol Daddy would go down and catch a bunch and clean them up so mom could fry the legs. At first I was, oh no I ain't eating that. But soon I tried them again and they were not bad.
Need I say we lived in the boonies...lol
:-( poor froggies.
If you saw how many frogs were in that pond, you would not say that.
We use to swim in to, there were frogs everywhere. It was funny, some of the larger tadpoles would play dead floating on top of the water until you got close to them and then they would swim away. You would feel them going all around your legs.
Frogs frogs everywhere...lol
I like frogs, but!!!! Euwww. Talk about a plague of frogs.
I highly recommend setting up a game camera at your pond -- it's been so much fun seeing what shows up. Today, working out next to the pond a female mallard flew over wanting to land (I didn't do very well blending into the scenery) and decided not to. As per request, here's a photo of my pond. It's brown from runoff --we've had record rains, but it clears up after a little while. Next steps are to run electricity out, setup a waterfall, put in more plants (that my ducks don't devour) and a wall of hedges across where the bench is to enclose the area. I've been amending the water with lime to try to get a little more growth and it's been working, but now aeration is needed. We'll see how things progress!
By the way from left to right are Hal, Early, and Baby my very spoiled house ducks (the pond is just a daily field trip).
jenniealice, remind me.. is there a liner in that pond. Ducks... I want ducks.....
Nope, no liner. We tried that at first, but not only was it hideous, there was so much water coming in through the ground that the "big fill" in winter pushed the liner up to the surface. However, with our soil and the fluctuation in groundwater, summertime we have a much lower water level in the pond. I think this year we might amend a few times with ordered water. I've added gobs of Bentonite, but I think it either requires much more or it's not really helping.
A note on ducks: these little guys are wonderful, but they are house ducks because of a tragedy with our previous ducks. No matter how safe you think the place is where you keep them, reinforce it even more. Predators are bound and determined with ducks. Most people don't know that ducks can live close to 20 years -- they don't know this because it's unheard of for ducks to die of old age: people don't protect them well enough. If I left these guys out for one night (which I NEVER would) they'd be goners by morning. They are the sweetest creatures--affectionate like dogs and cats, and incredibly intelligent and emotional. I hatched mine from eggs.
Jennie - they are so cute. Do ducks have one mate for life like wild geese?
Hello,
no they do not mate for life though having domesticated and imprinted ducks does "mess" with the natural order of things. Ducks can get very depressed when separated from their loved ones. 3 is the perfect number for me in my current situation--when I travel out of town every week for allergy injections I'm gone overnight so I bring 1 of 3 with me while the other two keep each other company and are cared for by my boyfriend. I have them on rotation each week so each duck gets a little one-on-one time with me for a night and a day. I couldn't imagine only having one duck--they would be so lonely if I went anywhere without them, it would be cruel.
This is a really good site about imprinted ducks (and geese) and keeping them at home:
http://www.thegoosesmother.com/
I'd like it if my ducks and the 2 wild mallards could be friends, though I don't believe my ducks know that they too, are actually ducks.
Jennie
great website. They are so cute!
Mableruth of boilbrook-I live in Deer Park (near barrington) and we have bluejays. You have to provide the right food and all year round consistantly to get them to hang about. It took a few years for me to encourage bluejays to stay here. I have 3-4 pairs on my acre now all year round after three years of "encouragement". I also have a lot of evergreen type trees for them to nest in and for protection.