Ponds and Water Life

This is a new venture: there is a lot which can be written on the subject. If you have an interest and would like to contribute, I would love to hear from you. Please use the 'Contact' button.


Introduction

This site is devoted to the ponds and pond life in and around south east Cambridgeshire. You will find lists of ponds, with photos and lists of species found plus links to other sites of interest. Clearly such an undertaking can only be partial so I would welcome help.

For most of my life I have kept aquaria, both native and tropical, and have therefore been 'pond-dipping' either for interest, to stock native aquaria, or to gather live food to feed the tropical tanks.

I have lived near to Cambridge for some 35 years, and I have noticed a decline in the number of our local ponds - which were never particularly plentiful to begin with! Other larger ponds have been stocked with fish and are now commercial angling sites - always a loss for wildlife, but surely such management is better than letting the pond silt up and dry up.

These 35 years around Cambridge have ben spend in Cambridge city, St Ives, Somersham and Burwell, so I am aware of many ponds in these areas. This site therefore lists ponds not only in Cambridge but also in Suffolk. Possibly also ponds in Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertfordshire and Essex may be included.

There is about to start an initiative to save Cambridgeshire's last remaining ponds, so I am starting a list here of the ponds and other water features of interest that I know, or have known. Very often the most interesting ponds, biologically, are the least obvious to the casual observer. You can even find interesting water life in a well weathered cattle trough! Only a couple of weeks ago (October 2002) I gave my fish a good feed of daphnia from such a cattle trough! Certainly the smaller ponds can be very interesting.

If you, too have an interest, or know of other ponds I should list, please use the Contact button to get in touch. Maybe we can even organise a 'pond-dipping' club and visit some of these ponds. I hope to give photos of many of these ponds, plus brief descriptions and (partial) listings of flora and fauna, so if you can help here, please contact me.

The interest and listing is not only for ponds, but also for other water features of interest to natural historians and aquarists. This is one of those projects that grows, the more you examine it, and will never be more than partial.

Many of the ponds are associated with country parks, SSSIs, nature reserves or other areas of interest, so this site also provides plenty of interesting places to visit and things to do in and around Cambridge.


Pond types

A listing such as this grows too big, so it is necessary to divide ponds into types. Clearly this cannot be entirely accurate, but I have made the following subdivisions.



Links

Water Life: descriptions and photos of animals and plants, some coldwater, some tropical.

Another page lists some links which may be of interest to visitors.


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Document URI: nathist.torrens.org /PAWL/index.html
Last modified: Mon, 26 Mar 2018 09:19:26 BST
Page first published 4th November 2002
Page written and © by Richard Torrens