The fish are alive

A couple of years ago I rebuilt the pond in the garden and we added 6 goldfish to help reduce the number of mosquito in the garden in late summer. The previous owners had a lovely water feature with lots of shaded still water - a perfect place for mosquito lava. The goldfish and the open pond with a mini pump to create an aerating waterfall seemed to work. But last year the fish all disappeared. We retrospectively observed a heron eating them all (plus a few frogs).

We have a number of cameras in the back garden for security and watching nature. One of these picked up the heron activity. Using data from a Birdnet pi installed in the garden I looked for Heron calls. One of our neighbours had mentioned seeing one in their garden. This gave me some times to go and look at the cameras. Sure enough, I found the culprit.

We didn’t replace the fish last year but I did plan to get more this spring. We started using some grills to help protect the frogs in the raised pond and an artificial heron is on the shopping list. But in September last year I was doing some gardening and saw an orange flash out the corner of my eye. A small goldfish in the pond! I watched for about 15 minutes and eventually observed two. Where had they come from? It seems like the original fish must have spawned last year and these survived through the winter.

The young fish survived the winter and seem happy enought this year - although they are much harder to watch, any movement and they dive back under the ledge.