I have just had one of those situations where a camera would have been very handy and have witnessed something I’ve never seen before. We have a small pond in our garden, about 6 feet across, which we put in about 4 years ago and have been delighted at the number of wild animals that have magically made it their home. These include Smooth Newts, Common Frogs, toads and a large variety of invertebrates such as aquatic snails, diving beetles, dragonflies, water measurers and even leeches. We also have several marginal, emergent and submerged plants such as water starworts, duckweeds, Rigid Hornwort, Brooklime and, in the middle, a large clump of Reed Sweet-grass, Fool’s Water-cress and a few Cyperus Sedge. None of this is particularly unusual. Ponds are excellent for attracting wildlife to a garden.
On the land we have Slow-worms among the areas of long grass, compost heap and small piles of stones. Messing about on the pond edge this morning I spotted a Slow-worm poke its head out of the shallow bank-side by the water. Thinking this an unusual place for it to be I called over my wife, Lucy, to see it. We then watched it, with part of its tail missing, swim across the water surface over to the clump of Reed Sweet-grass and eventually disappear from view, into the tussock and among the dead leaves and the small Frogs that congregate there. Personally I did not know that Slow-worms were capable of this and imagined that, apart from the need to swim, the colder temperature of the water would put them off.
Has anybody else seen or heard of this sort of thing? Meanwhile the camera was busy sleeping in its case in the hallway.
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