Tuesday 27 July 2010

Alien Invaders

Back in June, I touched upon the problem of introduced non British species into our waterways and in particular the Terrapins at Etherow Park.

Well Etherow is just one of many local waters to contain these creatures and Reddish Vale is another.
The other day I spotted a very young Terrapin basking on a floating log in one of the ponds down the Vale...


Whether or not this youngster had been freshly dumped into the pond or is a result of successful breeding between already established Terrapins I'm not quite sure.
The other thing I'm not sure of and perhaps I'll have to do a little research on the subject is the effect that these reptiles have on the Eco system.


This particular pond is fairly small, but as a good stock of small fish which are a good source of food for the resident Kingfishers, as well as the Terrapins.
Terrapins are also known to attack young wildfowl and I wonder if the death of a young Coot I spotted on the pond a couple of days earlier was a result of these alien invaders...




The sight of another exotic species and I guess an altogether less harmful creature in the pond made me chuckle...

I was sat quietly by the pond, hoping for the Kingfishers to turn up, when a two young children with small fishing nets turned up looking for Minnows and Sticklebacks. The Kids were accompanied by their parents and the four threw pieces of bread into the water hoping to attract the small fish.

After about 30 minutes or so, the father declared that "The pond was polluted and there were definitely no fish in there". Now of course, I knew that this wasn't true and the presence of Kingfishers and Terrapins on the Pond is proof enough of good fishing. The family then walked off the wooden jetty where they had been looking for fish and left the pond rather disappointed.

Less than a minute after they had left and from beneath the jetty where they stood, a huge Koi Carp came to the surface!

1 comment:

  1. Ah ... that charm ... great pictures!

    I love coming here to read your stories ...

    Kisses.

    ReplyDelete