Pond Skater

The calm surface of the pond in my garden hides all manner of creatures, and once in a while, I like to take a look to see how everyone is getting on, and who has turned up. There is nowhere in the garden that illustrates so easily the different levels of the ‘web of life’, and a short spell of pond dipping often turns up all kinds of creatures.

Starting at the top, I found some pond skaters. What voracious predators they are – they can detect the slightest tremor in the surface of the water through their legs, and can move at extraordinary speed when some poor unfortunate insect ditches into the pond. Often, half a dozen will head towards the source of the commotion at once, and then all of them will puncture their prey with their long, sharp mouthparts. They are the closest animals in the garden to wolves, and are, to me, just as graceful, although they skate on the surface tension rather than lope through the pine forest.

The common backswimmer is another predatory bug which is said to be able to puncture the skin of an unwary human. Last year I found lots of the pallid, blue-eyed nymphs, which are miniature versions of the adults, but haven’t seen any yet this year.

Common Backswimmer

This seems to have been a pretty good year for frogs – certainly every netful of water had half a dozen tadpoles in it. I find it interesting that they develop at such different rates – one of the tadpoles above is just starting to develop the buds of the back legs, whilst the other one has fully developed limbs. Whilst most tadpoles complete their life cycles during a single year, it has been observed that some tadpoles actually survive the winter as tadpoles, becoming adults in the following spring.  It’s a risky strategy – an adult frog is much more likely to survive a cold winter than a tadpole – but on the other hand, if the tadpole does survive, it will have the jump (pun intended!)on all the rest of the frogs who are still hibernating when the spring comes.

Once the front legs start to develop, the tadpoles turn from a vegetarian to a carnivorous diet, and are so able to turn the tables on some of the smaller creatures that may have been snacking on them earlier in their lives. Dragonfly and beetle larvae will eat small tadpoles, and even the backswimmers and pond skaters are not averse to preying on injured individuals, so I imagine them heaving a sigh of relief as they metamorphose.

Tadpoles

Not everything in the pond is a predator, however:

Water Hoglouse

A while ago, I wrote a piece about woodlice, and here in the pond I find their water-living relatives, the water hoglice. They bumble about in the debris at the bottom of the pond, helping to recycle all the leaves that seem to find their way in however meticulous I am about skimming them off. A handful of dead leaves is home to thousands of the creatures, varying in stature from the size of a grain of rice to the length of a fingernail. They always seem to me to be on a mission from which they are loathe to be distracted, as they bustle through the water. The females, like female woodlice, carry their eggs about with them in a brood pouch under their bodies.

Now, have a look at this little film.

What we have here, somewhat to my surprise, is a leech. Fortunately, this is not the gigantic bloodsucking leech found in the tropics,  but an inoffensive little leech that probably doesn’t suck blood at all, but lives instead by ingesting tiny invertebrates. I didn’t notice it at first, because it  compressed itself into the shape of a seed or twig.

Compressed leech

But soon it was off, looking for cover rather than prey I suspect (notwithstanding the alarm of the tadpole in the little film)

Extended leech

However, the commonest large (ish) creatures in the pond are definitely the snails.

Tadpoles and snails

All of the round shapes that you can see here are baby snails. Unless the pond is actually frozen, there are always some adult snails, swimming blithely through the water on their backs or munching away at the algae at the side of the pond. I have Great Pond Snails, Wandering Pond Snails and Dwarf Pond Snails, and the pond seems to suit them very well, if the volume of eggs that the Great Pond Snails lay is anything to go by:

Great Pond Snail Eggs

These gelatinous caterpillar-shaped objects are actually the egg masses of the Great Pond Snail, and will no doubt contribute further to the molluscan presence in the water, and serve as a source of food for the pond skaters, common backswimmers, young frogs and dragonfly nymphs.

My pond is a source of surprise and delight to me. Who knew that I had leeches? This might not be everybody’s idea of a happy Saturday discovery, but it fills me with joy that so many different kinds of living thing can be found right here in London, in a little back garden. We are surrounded by so many wonders, all we need to do is make a little bit of space of them and they will come.

Late last night, as I was cleaning my teeth, I noticed a tiny creature dancing on the dark red towel that was hanging above the radiator. I put my glasses on and leaned in for a closer look. The insect looked rather like a splinter of golden wood as it flew a few inches, stopped, flew up again. It appeared to be such a simple, inoffensive animal, but appearances can lie. This was a clothes moth, and he was unlikely to be on his own.

Clothes moths come in a variety of species. In this kind, only the male can fly for any distance. He emerges from a chrysalis and immediately starts to hunt for a female. The way that he does this is by scent – the female produces a pheromone, and he is drawn inexorably towards it. The females seem reluctant to fly : they wait for a male to turn up. Once they’ve mated, the female lays her eggs in a place where there will be lots of food.

The larvae have expensive tastes. They like wool, particularly cashmere or the fine material of an expensive suit. They seem to be attracted to spots on the fabric where there are traces of the organic – sweat or urine or dropped food. The babies munch away and voila, where you used to have your favourite jacket, you now have a doily.

They are also very partial to wool carpets and rugs. We had a particularly bad infestation when we lived in Islington, which could be traced back to some left-over scraps of Axminster that were left in the little attic at the top of the house. From there, the golden army had spread throughout the rest of the house.

By Aiwok (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

When animals ‘invade’ our houses, we often have a sense of disgust, almost panic. Creatures that are supposed to be ‘out there’ are ‘in here’ with us. But they are not just in the house because they like our company, or have anything against us personally, though it might feel like that on a visceral level. They are here because we have, albeit inadvertently, set up conditions for them to thrive, provided them with an opportunity. The way that we live has opened the door for them, whether it’s the flour beetles in the badly-stored flour, the mice munching on our dropped biscuit crumbs, or the moths in our wardrobes.

Clothes moths thrive where clothing is stored, not where it is worn. It takes time to generate a sizable infestation. This implies that there are clothes which are rarely, if ever, used, areas where nobody ever goes. A beautiful jacket that is no longer worn will become a haven for moth larvae, because it is never cleaned, never inspected, never enjoyed. It just hangs there, being eaten.

There are lots of theories about why clothes moths have made such a comeback recently. The winters are milder, houses are heated and are less draughty. But when I see moths in my home, I feel that they are bringing a different message.

The moths are telling me that I have too much stuff, that I am holding onto clothes that are neither in regular use, nor packed away securely to await their appropriate season. They are telling me that I am clinging onto things that I no longer need, and which might be useful to other people. They tell me what I already know – I am needlessly complicating my life. I need to simplify.

The little moth flies off. He is the only one that I’ve seen so far, but I know what I must do. Tomorrow, I will clear through the wardrobe, make sure my craft supplies are put away properly, do the laundry, send things for dry-cleaning. I will check carefully for signs of moth-damage. I will reduce what i have to what I actually intend to wear, and will find a way to recycle or dispose of the rest.

And when I look at the contents of my wardrobe, realise that I can actually see what clothes I have, I will feel much freer than I have for a long time.