Stickleback in a beer bottle.
Despite making a conscious decision not to stock the pond with fish in order to make the pond as attractive to Great Crested Newts (GCN) as possible, I recently spotted some movements in the pond that caught my eye... Grabbed a butterfly net from the garage and went back to investigate. Turns out that when pumping water into the pond from the nearby drain, some fish must have passed through the pump and made it into the pond! The Nine spine stickleback is a small fish, so I am not concerned for the newts or about the fish stirring up mud and silt as they are simply too small to bother most things except perhaps water fleas and the like. I did spot a fish that was a little larger the other week and have a suspicion it may have been a tiny Pike, but time will tell.
Note: Don't worry, the fish pictured above was returned unharmed to the pond, after its swim round the beer bottle. (Pond water in the bottle NOT beer!)
