Time Tunnel
We travel back to...
2001
...to give you a glimpse of our past and see what was happening at the Trust.
What was happening globally in 2001: • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the highest grossing film. • Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa reopened after 11 years spent fortifying the 12th-century tower. • Wikipedia, a free Wiki content encyclopaedia, goes online. • September 11 saw aircraft crash into the World Trade Centre & The Pentagon. • The first draft of the complete human genome was published in Nature. • The World population reached 6.2 billion while the population of Britain was 58.8 million.
One year after the millennium, Essex Wildlife Trust’s Autumn 2001 magazine focused on a watery world. Lin Wenlock, who at the time was the Chairman of the Trust’s Conservation Committee, unlocked some of the secrets of the wildlife within a garden pond.
Wildlife in ponds Water is the source of life, and it is not until you have a garden pond that you realise what a wildlife oasis it provides. At the bottom of the pond animal life feeds on a steady flow of dead and waste material from above. Animals with fascinating names such as the bloodworm, the rat-tailed maggot, and the sludgeworm share in this vital cleaning role. On the surface of the pond, pond skaters and whirligig beetles, aptly named by the way they move, feed on small flies that fall into the water. Below the surface the great diving beetle has to swim vigorously to stay near the bottom, the air stored beneath its wing cases making it extremely buoyant. It is a bold hunter, often hanging on to water plants with the second pair of legs, leaving the first pair free to catch its prey.
Big or small, ponds for all. Ponds were the focus of Wild About Gardens 2020. Read The Wildlife Trust’s guidance on garden ponds and learn how to create your own at www.wildaboutgardens.org.uk.
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WILD Autumn 2021
Spending most of the year on land where their skins are dry to touch, the adults must, towards the end of the winter, return to the water to breed. They become adapted to living in water, their skins get thinner and their tails narrower. Males develop a high wavy crest along their backs and another along their tails, which have a broad, iridescent stripe along each side. Eggs are laid singly on underwater leaves near the water margin. Leaves are folded over and sealed to protect them from predators. Four weeks later the eggs hatch and tadpoles emerge, looking like tiny transparent fish. Three months after hatching the young newt is ready to leave the water. For the next two to three years newly emerged great crested newts stay away from their birth ponds, returning after this time to breed. In October or November as temperatures start to fall, they hibernate, usually on land, choosing sheltered, damp, frost-free nooks, sometimes underground. They re-emerge in the spring to start the cycle of events again. The whole point of a wildlife pond is to attract wildlife to your garden, and many species are only present in the pond for a short time, or on a seasonal basis. As the seasons change so do the pleasures offered by a garden pond.
Great crested newt photo: John Bridges
Above the surface from the end of May to the end of August the dragonflies are on the wing. They are large, heavily built and powerful predators capable of very fast flight and feed on insects, which they catch and often consume while still in flight. In spring, the mating pair crawl to the water to lay their eggs which hatch into predatory nymphs living among the water weed. The nymph will lie in wait for prey, capturing it with a swift movement of its hinged, strongly clawed mask. After two years the nymph crawls out of the water on to an emergent plant for the final moult. The larval skin splits down the back enabling the fully developed insect to haul itself free.
Migrating from nearby larger ponds, and looking like a miniature aquatic dragon, the great crested newt can be seen lurking in the warm, weedy shallows. Easily the largest of the three species of British newts, the great crested newt can grow to 16 centimetres long. On top its warty skin is very dark, often black, speckled with tiny white spots. Its belly is usually orange to yellow with irregular black spots.
