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My younger son,
Vaughan, built this pond in the summer of 1993. It
has been sitting in our front yard since then,
thriving, with just the occasional clean out of
vegetation and topping up of water. It was
originally stocked with some goldfish and the
descendents of those fish are still in the pond.
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Plant life in the
pond includes papyrus reed, water lilies,
cat-tails and ????
At the time these photos were taken the
accumulation of vegetation has created a floating
island in the center of the pond.
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It is a tough
world in the pond and in its environs. Here we see
an insect (a wasp?) which is dragging a
grasshopper that it has captured and killed. The
grasshopper is quite a bit larger than the wasp
and the wasp is pulling it along using its wings
to provide themotive power to drag the
grasshopper. We watched this as the wasp dragged
th grasshopper for over thirty feet.
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This photo shows
ripples on the water created by tadpoles as they
come to the surface for a gulp of air or perhaps
to feed on something.
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And we do have
tadpoles!
Look at them all -- all those black spots in the
photo with little tails.
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We scopped a few
tadpoles out for a closer look. They are about a
centimeter long. These were the result of just one
little scoop.
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Ava was really
excited to have the tadpoles in a bowl in front of
her
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But Ava knew she
should put the tadpoles back in the pond so they
could grow into adults.
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As the tadpoles
get larger they change colour from black to a
brownish colour on top and whitish underneath. In
this photo, in the center of the rings we can see
the white underside of a tadpole.
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Liam has not visited the pond yet -- hopefully he
will do that soon.In the meantime here are a
couple of photographs of Liam at a lake in Ontario
in the summer of 2011.
On the right is a photograph of Liam and his
friend Katrina who are examining a fish he has
caught from the lake. Liam loves to go fishing
using worms and hotdogs as bait.
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And in this photo Katrina and Liam are watching as
Liam's mother releases the fish into the
lake.
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