MILLION LITRE FISH POND UPDATE

Not looking too bad and it's actually getting clearer. The water is clearing which is marvellous. Some of the terrapins survived, In fact most of them survived. There's one there, there you go, there's another one and there's another one right out in the middle of the pond there. You can actually see it under the water as well. Obviously the water hasn't cleared that much but at this time of year normally it would be like chocolate with all the bottom feeders in. It would be an absolute nightmare. So this is an improvement and to show you what an improvement it is, I've still got some trout in here so I'm going to chuck some food in. We'll see just how quickly they can find it in this clearing water. Now I've got approximately seven feet or 2.1 meters of water right off the end of this pier here so that's normally where the trout hang out. There's nicely oxygenated water there as well. Put some of that in there and hide in the pond. Oh well you buggers where you're at. The gunnera's started growing. This normally gets about eight to nine feet high. And these leaves can get up to six feet across. More gunnera. Big old skunk cabbage there. They've just about finished flowering now. Still can't see any fish. I'm beginning to get a little bit worried now. I can see you, there you are. Loads of nice iris coming up here. Maybe bonny one there flower. You'll notice that I've trimmed back all the plants right around that side. In fact, for about three quarters of the pond. I always leave a bit tatty because this is where the ducks tend to nest. I don't like to disturb this side too much. Oh here fish! Where you at? You can see just by looking here how clear the water is compared to what it was like last time. You can actually see under the water. That's another magnificent skunk cabbage. Load more iris. There's just a hell of a lot of plants that still come out and it's just going to be a riot of colour in the summer. There you are, there's a fish. By the looks of it, it was quite a big one. Good one. The fish are starting to feed now. It took them a hell of a long time, so the maybes were at the other end of the pond. I've got a spring that feeds the pond from about 300 yards up the field. Quite often there's a lot of food that gets washed down there, so they could have been right at the top end of the pond when I put the food in. They seem to have found it now. So at the moment, all I've got in is a few trout, some rudd, and a really strange hybrid between a goldfish and a crucian carp. I don't know how that survived the otters onslaught, but it did. It's been in since the start of the pond, which was about, I don't know, 12 years maybe. It isn't a natural pond. We put it in, it's spring fed, and it attracts an unbelievable amount of wildlife. In the summer we get the kingfisher up, and it feeds on all the roach and roach fry. It's just amazing. I can be sitting in my cabin here. Looking out at kingfishers sitting on the fishing platforms and it's it's quite magical. So the idea is to just allow this to clear naturally which it seems to be doing. Now we did electro fish this pond and it's also been fished as well but we electro fished it to get rid, well to relocate the bottom feeders. A lot of people were whinging on about the fact that we electro fished it but they just couldn't be fished out. So we electrofished it, we got a hell of a lot of the bottom feeders out, we relocated them in other ponds, private ponds, not linked to any waterways, any of that nonsense. Basically just people that own big estates with big ponds. They all got good homes. So now, pretty much all I've got left in here is a few trout. And they must be four or five years old. They've survived herons, mink, otter, cormorants. They really are doing quite well in there. So as the water clears, over the next few months, I hope to be adding a few more trout in here, not to fish for, although I might fish for them at a later date, just with a little light fly rod, because my son wants to learn to fly fish, but just because I like to see the trout. When I first put this in, the pond was absolutely crystal clear, it was like an alpine lake, and you could see the fish like seven or eight feet down, it was absolutely awesome, they went from this big to this big in no time at all. I want to get it back to that state, and now that all the bottom feeders are out, it's beginning to get back to that state, so I'm really happy about this. Where are you man? During the day we get swallows sweeping across the top of the pond, taking all the little flies off. On a night we get the bats going round the woodlands just full of life. It's absolutely awesome, it's just a hive of activity day and night. And when I come out at 6 o'clock in the morning, our wood is absolutely filled with bird song, it's like the ultimate dawn chorus, it's like being in a tropical rain forest or something. I suppose while I'm on, I might as well mention what we get in the garden in the way of wildlife and birds. That's a great tit, they're quite common. This morning I saw a chiff chaff, we've got warblers, obviously there's common things like wrens, robins, all the tit family and all that. We've got long-tailed tits, we've got hedge, not hedge sparrows, house, not house sparrows, not hedge sparrows, not house sparrows, the other one. Tree sparrows. We've got a good population of tree sparrows living around here, and I know of at least two of the nest boxes that I've put up that have young in. So that's a bit of an achievement, because they've been in real decline over the last few years. We've got the great spotted woodpecker in. It hammers on the trees and when they're calling backwards and forwards you can get two or three of them on the dead trees in the wood all backwards and forwards. And early in the morning that just echoes throughout the valley, it's awesome. We sometimes get the green woodpecker in, although not very often. You normally just hear it, you can hear it laughing in the back of the wood, laughing that you're never going to see it. I know down south when I go down to London you can get feet away from the green woodpeckers, but not up here for some reason. Seems to be once you get above York, they're very, very flighty birds. We've got a Sparrowhawk in, we get Tawny Owls, they've nested in one of the boxes before. Just outside the wood, we have had Barn Owls, although I haven't seen them this year. I hope that they come back. We've got a couple of different types of tree creepers. Siskins, linnets. Obviously the kingfisher comes up. The dipper's been on the pond. It comes up from the river. Bullfinches. They're nesting in one of my trees. Making a horrible little scabby nest. What else? There's all sorts in here. Absolutely all sorts. Kestrels. They nest just outside the wood. Pheasants. We've got a reasonable population of pheasants. There was two cock pheasants and about ten hen pheasants. But over the course of the last month or so, most of the hen pheasants have been run over on the nearby road. And I think one of the cock pheasants has as well, so they haven't really got much road sense. We've got partridge just in the backfield, a couple of different types of wagtails come up. There really is just a nation of things living in and around the pond and in the wood and in the surrounding fields because some of the surrounding fields are quite wet. So they attract quite a lot of birds. And as far as mammals go, we get weasels, stoats, rabbits. The weasels and stoats come in for the rabbits. I don't shoot the rabbits around here. I like to see them in the garden. I don't like to shoot things on my doorstep. Miles away, where they're in real plague proportions, it's a different matter. Round here, I don't mind seeing them, I can open the window and see five or six on the lawn, it doesn't really bother us. We've got the odd fox coming in, the odd badger. Otters have been in the pond, which I'm not really a fan of. We did have mink in the pond, but as the otters have kind of colonised the river, they seem to have driven the mink away. Hedgehogs, badgers come in to eat the hedgehogs, which I'm not a fan of. But the hedgehogs do an awesome job of eating all the slugs and snails. Obviously we've got quite a lot of frogs as well, I suppose the hedgehogs eat a lot of them, but you can go out in the garden, you can hardly see a slug or a snail, it's absolutely excellent. Grey squirrels, unfortunately, we used to have reds in the wood, greys came, reds disappeared. We've got voles, wood mice, water shrews, which you don't see much of, we've got ordinary shrews as well, we've got water shrews, tiny little things, almost jet black with a white belly. They've been in the pond. Unfortunately we don't get water voles. They used to be on the river, on the nearby river. I used to go and see them all the time. But unfortunately some clowns let some mink out from a fur farm, which again I don't agree with. But equally I don't agree with letting them out. That caused them to spread throughout the Tyne, the Derwent. They murdered all the water voles and now you just don't see them around here, which is a real shame. Because I reckon this pond would be quite good for water voles. One day they might come back, you never know. I hope so. Amphibians, pretty much everything that lives in the British Isles, except Natterjack toads and Midwife toads. We don't get them. Everything else, yes. I've got other little ponds around the place. The newts and the frogs tend to have enough sense to go in there. They're a little bit more suitable for them. If they go in here, the chances are they're going to get eaten by the fish. And it's a very deep pond as well. There's not much weed in it due to all the bottom feeders knocking it up. That might come back and we might get newts back in this pond, but they're more suited to the smaller ponds. Wee-yay! And before I go, I might as well just do a quick aerial view of the pond and garden so you can see what it's like. Ah, pants! There we go, not bad is it? And all of this has been created since we moved in. It's taken a ridiculous amount of hard work. Not so much money, although it has cost a canny bit of money, but it's taken more hard work than anything. My own little oasis. That's the view I get out my front window, which is not too bad. And also from the conservatory as well. Half decent deck out the front there. Hot tub. Hopefully these ridge tiles are going to get fixed when the fellas come to fix the chimney, which was recently damaged during a fire. I'm not going to hang around too long on this roof. It's pretty steep on my side. But what we intend to do, Is get the attic of this bungalow done out, stick a balcony on this side, so that's what we'll be looking out onto. At the moment, because the bungalow is so low, all we'll see is the dam wall, which is quite nice, but we can't see the pond from the house, which is a real bummer. We'll put it upstairs Ian, look out onto that, it'll be absolutely awesome. I'd better get down before I fall down I think. So it's been a while since I've done an update, I hope you've liked this one, there's not really that much to tell you other than the pond is clearing and everything's going well, but if you would like something like this in your garden, please click like. Thank you very much for watching.