"Pond Dipping"with Jane Downall - A world in miniature
It was a glorious day when we arrived at 5 Oaken Clough Terrace for to examine
the range of life in our pond. Paul L and Jean and were setting up a microscope
and tv where images from the microscope were further magnified. Jane arrived
shortly afterwards with long and short nets, examination trays and dishes
and identification sheets.
What a day we had! We identified baby newts, water boatmen, caddis flies,
ramshorn snails, various forms of larvae and pond shrimps. Jane talked us
through the life cycle of some of the life in the trays and before we took
the examination dishes up to the house to look at under the microscope but
projected on to the TV screen. They were truly amazing. We could even see
the cells on the leaves of the pond plants. So many things in this world
are hidden from the naked eye and through the microscope we entered a different
world today.
The highlight of the day for me personally was looking at a pregnant pond
shrimp on the screen and seeing the various little shrimps wriggling around
inside. This was truly amazing and something I'll probably never see again.
After the pond dipping we walked around the woodland garden and identified
some of the trees. We were very glad that Jane offered to come back next
weekend to do the remainder of the trees as we want to complete our map of
the woodland garden and be able to name all of the trees on our site. We
all had a brilliant day and really look forward to having Jane there again
to share her knowledge with us.
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