One Year Pond Study: Week 33 – Update on the Works at the Pond

This week at our pond:

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Much is changing at the pond and I am struggling to keep up!  Autumn is well and truly here, with the leaves falling off the trees, the water level rising considerably and the return of the many, many seagulls.  This could have potentially been the best season for pond study, due to the huge changes that naturally occur in wildlife around this time.  However, whilst I am very interested to see what is going on with the ‘works’, we were all very disappointed by the lack of bird life actually in the pond.  It seems they have all upped and left, which will be a huge loss to the children.  We saw seagulls (see picture above) and two Moorhens.  And that was it.  No other sign of any of our old friends at all:

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As I mentioned before the water level was very high.  Here is a picture of it just a few weeks ago:

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And now:

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It is heading towards its spring level (week 7):

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Elsewhere you can see the effects of the ‘works’ all around, notwithstanding the lack of wildlife:

A horrible net fence has been erected the whole way down one side of the pond
A horrible net fence has been erected the whole way down one side of the pond
Down that side all of the trees and plant life has been removed
Down that side all of the trees and plant life has been removed
A wooden fence made of the branches they have cut down has been built about 2 meters from the same edge. We don't know why or what it is for
A wooden fence made of the branches they have cut down has been built about 2 meters from the same edge. We don’t know why or what it is for
Where the small trees have been removed, there seems to be wide gaping hole under the pavement.
Where the small trees have been removed, there seems to be a wide gaping hole under the pavement.  It will be interesting to see what the conservation workers intend to do with that.

We haven’t managed to visit the pond when any of the workers have been there.  When/if we do, we will make sure we obtain answers to our many questions!

News on the conservation front.  My email to the council was answered swiftly and we were invited to take part in their conservation work day this Sunday.  Because it fell on a Sunday we were unable to go (it is probably our busiest day of the week!), however we are hopeful we will be able to attend others.  In addition, we were asked to provide details about the wildlife to the council, who would use them to create a pond visitor information board.  Who would have thought we would have had the opportunity to be part of the history of the pond, all those weeks ago when we first started the study?