Tad Poll latest

I’m afraid we’re in the grip of election fever.

The latest TAD POLL suggests a fall in support for the Liberal Democrats.

I see YouGov has reported the same trend.

Today’s latest result is here: http://www.pondconservation.org.uk/aboutus/News/latestnews/tadpollupdate28apr2010

Do pass on the link to other people if you think they might enjoy our joke.

The Tad Poll

Inspired by election fever, we’ve just launched Tad Poll: the first, and only, utterly independent poll of truly floating voters.

Have a look here.

And if you like our joke – why not share it with someone else? Because there is a serious point too, to highlight the need to better protect freshwater wildlife.

Tad Poll confirms that the Conservatives are in the lead in the election, followed by the Liberal Democrats, with Labour currently in third place.

But there’s not much between them

The Tad Poll results for the week 23-24th April

Belly up

Dead Broad-bodied chaser larvae in the pond yesterday (click the picture for a better view)

It’s natural to wonder whether you can have too much of a good thing – and when you’ve got thousands of tadpoles you do begin to wonder ‘Is that just too many? The usual answer is to say no, we’ll just let nature take it’s course.

But it seems quite likely that there will be some downsides when a small pond is occupied by a large number of the little squiggling munch monsters.

And what’s shown in the photo above may be one of those downsides  (sorry – only had a snappy camera available hence very bad photo, even by my standards!).

What you can see are two dead Broad-bodied Chaser larvae – belly up, having floated to the surface.

Here’s a closer view.

Tadpoles and pond skater feeding on dead Broad-bodied Chaser dragonfly larva

So far I’ve seen 4 and I can’t help thinking there may be a connection with the tadpoles – certainly I didn’t see anything like this last year.

I’m wondering whether the dragonflies simply ran out of oxygen – so will be testing the water soon to see how oxygen levels are going.

My mosses are also getting a severe haircut from the hordes (sorry – bit judgemental – how about ‘…..the crowd, or host…) of tadpoles.

Actually, although I’m a little sad to see the dead dragonflies I’m still happy to let nature ‘take its course’ – the sheer quantity of tadpoles is a spectacle, and I can tolerate a few casualties for now.

And also nothing’s wasted – as you can’t see in the second photo, the dead dragonflies are becoming tadpole food.

Don’t touch – dangerous (or protected) nature

It’s worth reading this article in today’s Independent by Peter Marren.

Though I can’t help feeling that it will be part of the problem if we start calling not going out ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’.

Anyway, have look here.

But I’m also struck by how early on children’s views of the natural world, like all other parts of their lives, are shaped by their parents.

When adults teach children that wasps are dangerous and that the correct response to a spider is a physical and mental ‘eee-yuk’ there’s a danger that those children will forever be scared of nature.

It’s frothy, man

Beneath the froth are thousands of tadpoles

Persons of a certain vintage may remember a 1970s advert for a sugary drink called Cresta.

Though the drink is (I presume) long forgotten, the advert is still out there with its catch-phrase: ‘It’s frothy, man’ (you can tell how long ago it was – what advert could use this strap line now and not seem a little ridiculous?).

But for obvious reasons it seems to describe to perfection the current state of the pond.

Frothy.

But this time it’s not due to the presence of sugars and other, no doubt now frowned-upon, substances that were present in the original drink.

This froth is stirred up by the huge numbers of tadpoles in the pond. Though the actual mechanism I’m not really sure of: maybe a protein-rich film on the water surface being whipped-up like egg whites? Maybe oxygen produced by algae under the water somehow being captured in the bubbles. I don’t know.

But I’ve certainly never seen anything like it before.

Tolstoy and biodiversity?

You’d probably never expect the words Tolstoy and biodiversity in the same sentence and certainly no one could accuse Tolstoy of having anything much to say about the natural world.

Yet this most famous line of Tolstoy’s: ’All happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way‘ echoed in my mind as I stood over this sad little river, yesterday, on the edge of Parma (Italy).

But here nature stands art on its head because all damaged rivers are alike whereas every undamaged river is different, each in it’s own unique way.

Here is the universal grey water, growths of algae, artificially shaped riverbanks and unnaturally deep channel of a damaged river.

Can we fix such problems? I am not overly optimistic.

Here today, gone tomorrow

Diana’s comment on her Great Diving Beetle reminds me of two things.

First, it’s around now that if you keep a look out you can spot some of the comings and goings of smaller animals – although it is hard to drag your attention away from the masses of tadpoles.

Yesterday I had a brief encounter with a whirligig – so far they’ve dropped in most springs, but not hung around, and they certainly haven’t bred in my pond – I’ve seen none of the very distinctive larvae.

Common Whirligig (Gyrinus substriatus): this brilliant picture is from the Beetles of the World website

I’m not sure which of our twelve species it was – most likely it was the animal above, which is our commonest whirligig by a long chalk, but I would have needed a good close look to be certain.

One thing I can be pretty certain of: it wasn’t the creature listed as the Whirligig in the current Collins guide to Freshwater Life – Gyrinus natator (jy-rinus na-tay-tor).

This animal, which also has a proper English name – it’s called the Shady Whirligig – is actually extinct in Britain, and not ‘widespread and common’ as the book says.

For those who are seriously keen on water beetles the thing to do is join the Balfour Browne Club which provides one of the most informative small journals of really good freshwater natural history about water beetles.

Diana’s remarks also reminded me that we have also had the first British record of a new beetle that could easily be mistaken for one of our Great Diving beetles – at present it’s only reasonably plausible English name is The Peardrop (quite a good name, given its distinctive shape) – it’s called Cybister laterimarginalis in Latin (sy-bist-er lat-erry-margin-ay-lis: it’s a bit of a mouthfull at first).

It’s shape is distinctive – and an extra incentive to look carefully at those great diving beetles to find out which is which.

You can see a good picture here on Lars Iversens Flickr site.

Is this my favourite animal?

Our trip to the New Forest provided a chance to see an animal that is one of my favourites.

No, not a New Forest Pony or even a New Forest Donkey, though these animals play a big part in keeping the Forest the wonderful place it is.

Close grazing by ponies, cattle, donkeys, sheep and even pigs, without the use of fertilisers to artificially boost the production of grass, is vital to the maintenance of the wonderful New Forest landscape.

The donkeys were quite pleased to see us - though I wasn't quite as pleased to see them as the photo is suggesting

My favourite animal, it will probably not surprise you to learn, is a bit smaller but no less beautfiul (well, with all due respect to donkeys and ponies, actually rather more beautiful).

Of course you can’t cuddle Fairy Shrimps in quite the same way as a donkey but they are small miracles.

CLICK TO SEE A HIGHER RES PICTURE. Fairy Shrimps swim upside down on their backs: here you can see the fine limbs behind the head that filter food from the water and the full egg sac - this animal will soon complete its life, leaving the next generation of eggs to hatch once the pond has gone through a drying and re-wetting cycle. I grabbed a quick snap of this one in my white tray.

Fairy Shrimps – ours is called Chirocephalus diaphanus (ky-row-kef-a-lus di-af-an-us) – are crustaceans that grow up to about an inch long and glide serenely through shallow water in seasonal ponds which dry out in summer.

Here’s a better, indoor, picture of Chirocephalus taken by Jean-François Cart.

In this country they live in ponds scattered around a few of our better quality landscapes: the New Forest, the hills of mid-Wales, the edge of Dartmoor, the Army Ranges on Salisbury Plain (where they are found in water-filled ruts left by tanks) and a few other places. Their scarcity, and the sensitivity of their habitat – nearly always confined to the highest quality unpolluted ponds in gently managed landscapes – means that they are listed in the United Kingdom Red Data Book and are given special protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

They only survive in ponds with no fish – and are another creature where special vigilance is needed if they are to remain part of our lives in the future.

Dispatches from the front line of the extinction crisis

Maybe the next extinction of a wild creature in England will take place here?

It’s easy to assume that extinction is happening somewhere else: in the tiger forests of Asia, the bamboo groves of central China, where a few hundred Giant Pandas still survive, or in the South American rainforests being cleared for burgers and biofuel.

But you don’t need to go so far afield to see biodiversity in peril.

For the special creature that lives in the pond shown above, this is its final frontier in England.

In fact, frontier makes things sound better than they really are because this little pond is the only place where – well, I’m not going to say exactly what the animal is – lives.

It’s a remarkable creature which has become rare all over its European range, which only survives where the landscape is lightly used and water is free from pollution. It is unlikely to survive outside of areas protected from the dirty water that typifies so much of the modern landscape, with its heavily fertilised farmland and grimy urban runoff.

This animals also requires ponds which many do not even recognise as ponds – those which dry out in summer.

But perhaps even more remarkable is that this animal hangs on here at all – in a pond that is only 3 metres from the edge of the nearest road. So although this place has all possible protections available (from Acts of Parliament to zoo bred captive populations of the animal in question), still one serious tanker spill, one overturned load of farmyard manure could easily spell the end.

It can only be a matter of time before something catestrophic happens to this pond

There are captive populations but, as yet, no one has succeeded in returning captive bred animals to the wild or creating new habitats for this creature.

Tadpoles and shallow water

My tadpoles are beginning to show their love of (very) shallow water.

Here they are in the New Pond congregating over gravel in water that is 1 inch deep.

And in a similar depth of water at the grassy edge of the Old Pond where there is currently a wriggling mass of the week old hatchlings.