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Gardeners World blog

Wildlife

Fish out of water

Posted by: Richard Jones, 23 January 2008, 11.06AM

Fish At certain times of the year, as I look out over my back garden, I see a huge heron perched on the chimney stacks of the next street. It's an infrequent, but fairly regular visitor and I often wonder what is attracting it.

Our garden pond, up and running now that I've replaced the liner and refilled it, has frogs and newts at certain times of the year, but I've covered it with a wire mesh to prevent certain 2-year-olds taking an accidental dip, and I'm certain it would also foil the attentions of the heron.

I've always assumed that someone else round here must have a garden pond that is not heron-proofed. Of course, all this was forgotten until breakfast on Saturday when my older daughter looked down from her bowl of coco-pops and rice-crispies and exclaimed that there was a fish on the floor.

So there was. About 15cm long, slim and silver with reddish fins and tail. What? There can be little doubt that it was one of the felines that brought it home through the cat flap, but how?

I'm now left wondering whether I have fisher-cats. Or perhaps they filched it from another pond. Or was it dropped by that heron? Or... does anyone have any other ideas?

Comments

  • Galya Mcfarlane

    23 January 2008, 07.32PM

    I also had a cat that liked fishing. She spoiled my sons' science project by managing to get her paws under the netting I had put over an old tin bath that my sons had filled with minnows and stickleback fish. She didnt eat them but left her little trophys on the kitchen floor. So I would blame the cats not the heron.

  • Richard Jones - Update

    30 January 2008, 05.35PM

    It turns out that neighbours three doors down have a small pond with fish. And they recently took the netting cover off. I'm plagued with guilt. I saw them today (Wednesday) and confessed to the events. But it turns out that they still have their full complement. They had already heard about our catch anyway. So the mystery deepens.

  • joey woosey

    11 September 2008, 10.49PM

    i have a fish pond. and it isn't too big. and i was doing what monty was doing on gardenersworld by puting it in half shadeto see how it turned out. it has got gold fish in it .only i got a leak in it so i needed to empty it. so i needed to get all the gold fish out. i only had about ten fish in it . and when i started to net them. i found i have got five more fish than what i started with. the five fish that i got was carp. the only thing that i could think of was a heron came and that put them in.

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