Pond life you will find living in your wildlife pond.

Puddling clay  Frogs  Duckweed  Maintenance  Bog garden   Fixing leaks  Pond builder  Nature pond

Frogs, toads and newts, can be beneficial garden creatures eating a wide range of garden pests. Pond-life can be encouraged into your garden by providing log piles and other damp habitats in which they can shelter and a wildlife friendly pond where tadpoles can develop.

These are the key factors in getting the environment and habitat right to attract and sustain pond life

Water is obviously essential to pond life and other wildlife living in and around your garden who will make use of it:

• Frogs, toads and newts will use even small bodies of water to breed. Although the adults and juveniles do most of their feeding on land, all of these amphibians must have water, such as a pond, in which they will mate and lay eggs
• Caddis flies, damselflies, dragonflies, mayflies, pond skaters, snails and water beetles breed in water
• Birds such as swallows and house martins will pick off insects from above the water surface and use the mud for nest building
• You might even see grass snakes hunting in your pond. 

Structure 

• Shape is crucial so make least one side of the pond a long shallow slope to allow easy access and escape for pond life and other wildlife like birds or animals that may visit to bathe or drink and for hedgehogs that might fall in. Help to build a wildlife pond.
• Even frogs and other amphibians can drown if there’s no way out. 
• A layer of cobbles and large flat stones on the sloping side will create a perfect habitats for amphibians and insects.
• A shallow boggy area will create a damp habitat vital for many beetles, bugs and flies.
• Frogs and toads need a point above the water on which to rest and breathe, areas of shallow water are best, but a few rocks or logs half in and half out of the water work too.

Shading over part of the pond

• Shade will helps reduce problems with algae.
• However, too much shade is not good for wildlife or plants. Try to shade about 3/4 of the pond surface.

Planting 

• You may not have to plant up your pond if the pond is located near to other established ponds as natural colonisation by plants will occur surprisingly quickly. This also applies to pond life, again you will be surprised at just how quickly frogs and other pond-life find your new pond. However, planting up the pond yourself will give you control over its appearance.
• Try to stick to native plants, they provide the best habitat and make a real and natural wildlife pond.  
• Marginals provide important areas of cover and breeding sites. Dense vegetation on one side of the pond gives cover for wildlife entering and leaving the pond. 
• Floating plants are used to cover and shade about 3/4 of the surface.
• Submerged plants are the oxygenators
• Dead branches and logs enrich the habitat.  

Ornamental KOI fish 

• Koi should be avoided in a wildlife pond as they eat the pond life and every thing else in sight and a make a filthy mess in the water.  

Maintaining a wildlife pond 

• Is similar to any other pond.  My article covers how to maintain a wildlife pond 
• Silting up is natural process in a wildlife pond and essential to mud-dwelling creatures.  If you have to remove sediment do this in early autumn, removing only half at one time to minimise the loss of mud-dwelling creatures and their habitat.  Bear in mind some pond-life will hibernate in the bottom of ponds.

Problems.

• Aquatic weeds such as duckweed can smother the surface cutting out all light, this will kill the pond.  
• Pond water can become green or covered in blanket weed when algae takes hold. I have covered how to control algae here green water.

Stocking the pond. 

• The best way to stock a pond with pond-life is to make it as wildlife friendly as possible. Allowing the new ponds to become colonised naturally by amphibians already present in the area.
• By allowing the pond to be colonised naturally you won't be introducing wildlife strange to the habitat and likely to die.
• I like to add a bucket or two of silt and water taken from an established healthy, clear and wildlife friendly pond to kick start the snail and insect population.
• Newts can be attracted by allowing grass to grow over the pond edge into the water. See my article building a nature pond. 

  Common blue damselfly 
The male Damselfly has a blue abdomen with black spots; the female, a yellow or bluish abdomen with variable dark markings and is common throughout England. Between May and September you will see the pair resting on vegetation near the wildlife pond. And flying together over the pond, mating and laying eggs on pond plants, just below the surface of the water. 
The eggs hatch and the larvae, called nymphs, live in the pond until they are ready to climb up a plant stem to moult into damselflies. 

Dragonfly 

A dragonfly is a double winged insect similar to damselflies. The adults can be differentiated by the fact that the wings of most dragonflies are held away from, and perpendicular to, the body when at rest.

Dragonflies eat mosquitoes and other small insects like flies, bees, ants, wasps, but very rarely butterflies, so should be encouraged around your wildlife pond. They are usually found around marshes, lakes, ponds, streams, and wetlands because their larvae, like the damselfly, known as "nymphs", are also aquatic. There are over 5000 different species of dragonflies so impossible to list them all here. 
The Common Toad
The Common Toad is probably the most widespread amphibian in England,  found in woodlands, rough grasslands, moors, and your garden pond. It actually spends most of its life on land. When breaking up old paths, I have even found them  living and breeding, apparently  trapped in small damp alcoves under concrete paths. However, because they usually need to breed and lay  spawn in water there is normally a pond nearby  to head too, usually in masses, around February to March, to find partners, mate and lay spawn. Common toad spawn can be recognised  from frog spawn as its laid in strings. 

The Common Water Boatman
The Common Water Boatman is a fascinating small water bug, about two centimetres long, light brown or green in colour with piercing and sucking mouth parts. It is found all over England in ponds, canals, rivers and lakes, even in cow troughs. It has its name ‘Boatman’ because its long hind legs are shaped like oars and when it swims near to the surface of the water, it just looks like a very small rowing boat.
When the Common Water Boatman swims up-side down, it carries lots of air bubbles on its underside which makes it look a silvery white colour. It has two short front legs used for grabbing prey and two long, paddle-shaped hind legs used for swimming. It has a triangular-shaped head and mouth and two large red eyes.
The Common Water Boatman arrives by air, into your pond and lives off small tadpoles, small water fleas and mites. Kids are fascinated by its rowing boat shape paddling across the pond. 
The Medicinal Leech
The Medicinal Leech is the blood-sucking worm with a flattened segmented body, used for centuries for medicinal purposes, like removing ‘bad blood’ or to ‘treat headaches’. The leech is found all over England in muddy ponds with lots of waterweed.

The Medicinal Leech is about eight centimetres long with a dark brown or black body with orange-red lines running down it with a sucker on its head and at the end of its tail. The Medicinal leech uses these suckers to attach itself to frogs and other pond life and then bite into its prey and suck blood. When the Leech has taken enough blood, it drops off into the water and it may not need to suck blood again for another six month.

The leech is not easy to be seen, but if you look very closely, can be spotted moving around your pond in a wriggling fashion. You are most likely to spot it when attached to a frog.