#30DaysWild Day 4: Pond Dipping

Inspired by a guide to pond dipping with a GoPro by Wildlife Gadget Man's we decided to have a go at pond dipping and some underwater filming. I'd never even thought about sticking a GoPro in the pond, so it was quite exciting to see if we could see anything.

Our pond in the garden isn't very big and is covered by a metal grid (to stop children and pets from falling in!) so its quite tricky to get to. We wanted to try out some underwater filming, so stuck the GoPro in to see if we could see anything. There are two fish in there so we managed to spy on what they get up to, but didn't see very much else.

Now we knew it worked, we wanted to do some pond dipping and try out the GoPro in the wild. We gathered together a net and white dish, picked the kids up from school and headed up the hill to Brush Hill, where there are two ponds in the middle of the woods.

On the way to the ponds

One of the ponds was dug last winter, so is fairly new and is definitely man made. The other is older and I don't think is man made. Unfortunately when we got there, the water was almost all gone from the older pond. It was much too muddy and shallow to pond dip or film.

The new pond had plenty of water in it, so we stuck the GoPro in and left it to film while we had a go at pond dipping.

#30DaysWild Day 4

There were pond skaters on the top of the water and with the net we caught red worm-like creatures that I think are midge larvae, water shrimps, water slaters, beetle larvae and leeches.

We took the camera home and had a look. It was quite murky, but we could definitely see 'things' in the water and several of the red midge larvae made an appearance.

 Lots of fun and very interesting to see what's in the murky water!