An Unhealthy Interest

The young couple who are my neighbours have now acquired two puppies and two cats.  They all seem delightful.  Well, as delightful as cats can be when they are interested in one's goldfish.

The solution that I had found to keep the seagulls off seemed unlikely to deter this curious chap.

So another deterrent had to be found

and this is it: floating plastic interconnecting grids which prevent  the cat from getting into the pond or scooping the fish out and at the same time preventing the gulls swooping down.  What's more for most of the time they can hardly be seen 

Thankful Thursday

I really must get my bum into gear.  When I arrived back in my Island home I started in a whirlwind of getting things done and catching up.  Last week a friend came to stay and it made me relax.  Now I can't get myself back into gear mentally or physically.  Of course I've been doing things: mainly indoors since the perfect summer weather we were having turned back to our normal summer weather but there is a big difference between just doing things and Doing Things!

So today I've resolved at least to start blogging again whilst I'm setting up my new Network Cloud Drive and this afternoon I'll get into the garden and also do some outside house maintenance.  Didn't you just want to know all that?

The fish are doing really well.  They are huge now.  The plastic bag was about the size of a large waterlily leaf so you can get some idea of how much they have grown in two years.

Ah.  Yes.  Thankful Thursday.  I look out of my window at the peace of my garden and the children down on the beach and the pier, swimming and pier jumping and the dog walkers along the shore below me and it makes me realise just how thankful I am and, I presume, everyone of you who read this post should be, for the fact that we are not living in a zone of conflict where even the basic necessities of life, never mind the things we think we 'need' to maintain our pleasant life styles, are denied us.

The Solution - I Hope

Yesterday, and most of today, the weather was as perfect as it can get on Lewis.  The sun shone, the heat heated, the zephyrs gently caressed us and the midges, flies and clegs disappeared from whence they usually come.  All was well in the world - so far as the weather was concerned anyway.  So over the two days I've repaired paths, cleaned and repaired the UPVC porch and part of the study, cut hedges, weeded, and when I was sitting having a coffee break and indulging in some rare thinking I realised the solution to The Seagull Problem.  It occurred to me that the gulls dive into the pond and then need space to fly out of the pond itself.  So this should, I hope, be enough to thwart their efforts:

I will still have access to the pond and area around it and, hopefully, the goldfish will be safe.

I Googled it.

The gulls are still making frequent overpasses to see if they can get at the meal they so desire.  Lazy creatures that they are: there's a whole bay full of sand eels a hundred metres away.  I decided that Jean (Jayview) had come up with the answer I would pursue.  Unfortunately when I looked at the practicalities of it for the moment it's on the back burner.  So tomorrow I will go and buy some net and make a frame to cover the surface.

When I Googled (should 'Googled' have a capital letter used thus?) I had an absolutely fascinating read.  I read that gulls don't eat fish.  I did, however, also come across a fascinating treatise by  Dr Adrian Lawler entitled Predatory Birds and Small Fish Ponds in which he concluded:

we are left with the following ways to try to protect our pond fish (methods that physically exclude the birds work best; killing or trapping methods are not listed because of protection laws):--stock out fish that are not easily visible in the pond (not brightly colored, or whitish, fish), --cut limbs that birds can dive from that overhang pond,--plant screens or other cover to prevent birds from getting (flying to, or walking to) to pond, --put fencing around pond to prevent larger herons from walking up to pond (also serves as deterrent for children), --make pond steep-sided and deeper than 18" at edges to keep wading birds out of pond, --put overhangs around edge of pond that prevent birds from getting to fishes that like to circle ponds at edges (overhangs should be high enough off water so they will not serve as fishing platform), --put a greenhouse around pond,--install bird netting (keep tight) to discourage diving or wade-fishing or bank fishing birds, --use decoys of competing large herons (to discourage other herons), --use various noisemakers (e.g., gas exploders, fireworks, or bird distress calls) (but not too effective unless noises made at irregular intervals, come from changing directions, etc.),--use fireworks for several evenings to disperse cormorants from their night roosts (can result in dispersed birds not going back to fishing at previous feeding sites),--use visual devices as foil and cloth strips, flags, balloons or objects with or without eyespots, irregular flashing lights, scarecrows, and artificial decoy hawks or owls, --use motion detector devices that spray water, or make noise, or turn on lights when activated,--avoid using logs and rocks, etc. around/in ponds that can be used as fishing perches,--get an aggressive dog trained to chase birds (this can be one of the best bird deterrents except when there are several ponds and the dog gets exhausted chasing the birds).

In the meantime the fish (not subtly camouflage coloured you will notice) keep swimming:

Deterring Hunters

The goldfish are thriving.  The largest has grown from 3" to about 9" in the two years since I got them.  Until a few days ago when David was here I had never seen a seagull try to take one.  Then one evening a Black-backed Gull flew into the pond, attempted to get one (but got a beak full of pondweed instead) and flew off: all within a few seconds.  David was in the study and I was in the kitchen.  We both raced out.  We immediately erected a rough and ready defence-against-the-maurauding-gulls contraption.  It's still there and still deterring the enemy who makes constant forays to see if he can get at the fish.  So my next challenge is to see if I can find an acceptable deterrent which doesn't spoil my enjoyment of the pond and rockery but keeps the fish safe.  

I would perhaps understand a bit better and be more sympathetic to the seagull if there wasn't plentiful stocks of sand eels down in the bay a hundred metres away. 

Can I just add that the beautiful weather we've had the last few days has kept me from Blogland during the day and the fact that the internet has been down a lot and I've had visitors has kept me off in the evening and first thing in the morning.  It's a hard life.  My new bed has arrived though and is ready for occupation tonight so perhaps tomorrow...... 

Some People Have an Ivy

I have goldfish: hungry goldfish.  Today some of the pellets fell onto the leaves of the waterlilies.  What followed really surprised me.  The fish spent an hour or so trying to get them.

Okay I accept that they are not as cuddly as Ivy, nor as mischievous but I do enjoy them.

The Fish: An Update

Just under a year ago I introduced 5 goldfish to the pond in the garden and posted about it here.  I was asked in response to yesterday's post how they were getting on.  They are getting on splendidly thank you.  In fact three of them are about 5 or 6 inches (12 to 15 cm) long whilst the other two are about half that length.  One of the larger ones has turned almost white.  They seem very happy and when all the work was going on levelling the pool edge they didn't even bother going down to the bottom of the pond to hide.  

Goldfish Progress Report

Someone said that as soon as I put goldfish in the pond I'd become really interested in them and keep reporting progress.  Me?  They had to be joking.  Whether they were or not I have to admit that they hit the nail on the head.  I can't admit to being besotted with them or even knowing their names individually.  One is larger than the other four though.  I know that much.  I also know that they are growing.  They are not quite as reclusive as they used to be either.  So here is the current state of affairs pictorially.   They are not the easiest of things to photograph because if I stand over the pond to avoid reflections they very wisely dive for cover.  So these photos were taken through the kitchen window.  Perhaps one day they will be trained to pose for photos.

A Chance and Change of Mind

Ever since I built the pond some years ago people have asked whether I intended to put fish in it and I've always answered in the negative because I have always believed that any fish I put in would immediately be devoured by the black backed gulls.  I very rarely see gulls in the garden but only being a hundred or two yards or so from the sea it's inevitable that gulls pass over the pond constantly.  Someone recently mentioned that goldfish ate algae.  I'm not sure that they do (although opinion on various websites I visited varies).  Anyway the water in the pond is crystal clear and there's plenty of life in the pond so I decided on a whim a few days ago to take the plunge (so to speak) and bought five little goldfish.

I put the bag complete with the goldfish in the pond for a few hours to match the water temperature.  The bag was half in sun and half in shade.  On the whole the fish liked the sun.  Obviously they are discerning fish.

Newly introduced and acclimatising.  The water in the bag's rather cloudy 

I was rather puzzled by the little creature (it is a creature isn't it?) in the bag which I didn't see at the time but which I've magnified.  I wonder if Helen or Ian or CJ or anyone else for that matter can identify it.

Now my knowledge of goldfish is limited to the research published in a splendid book called The Drunken Goldfish.  I thought that I had blogged on that most splendid of books but apparently not.  I shall have to remedy that.  Anyway one of the things I learned was that goldfish immersed in a solution of 3.1% alcohol will swim upside down.  There's lots more too involving goldfish short and long term memory.  Now I always thought that the memory span of a goldfish was about 7 seconds.  However..... Stop me!  You really don't want to know.

After the acclimatisation time was up I cut the neck off the bag they had come in and let the water mingle and the fish wander out.  After a while they did just that.  

The proprietor of the shop where I'd bought them told me that the fish would immediately disappear not to be seen for several days when they would come out to play.  Obviously the fish hadn't read the same book because they spent the day in the sun exploring and eating and apparently deciding on their respective territories in full view of me and any marauding gulls.

However this morning for a few hours the wind blew, the rain attempted to fall (we had .5 mm before the sun came out again) and the fish disappeared into the weed at the bottom of the pond.  I did see one later in the day under the waterlily pads.

The exercise has made me wonder though.  Do goldfish find that the raindrops on the pond make a noise that is unpleasant to them?  If I switch on the water pump and waterfall will they somehow find their environment less congenial?  After all now that I am a custodian of the lives of five fish I have to think of their welfare.