Saturday, 12th February 2011

We had another great event today, we tackled the big pond! It was way overdue, last summer we delayed cleaning it as we didn't want to disturb the little waterhens, and then there was a second brood of them and we delayed yet further. If we'd known they would all be killed we might not have waited so long.
Then, of course, we had a very early winter and the ice continued on the pond for ages. Anyway, today was the day!

We set up and John switched on the pump at quarter past nine. It started first time and performed brilliantly until it glugg-glugged out in the last couple of inches of mud.

Our 13 feathered friends were not amused that we'd taken over their pond, they hung around for nearly an hour when they decided it was no use and retired to the little pond squabbling noisily. I had no sympathy with them - I mean, they've got a perfectly clean and much larger frog pond to swim around in.

Yes, I did take some photos, starting with Primmie, Hedda and Anabelle making a big show of preening their feathers in a bowl with really dirty water!

At this time the pump had been working for only 15 minutes, but you can see from the line of little feathers caught in the netting [where the water level had been] in the next three pictures how much water had already been pumped out.

After 50 minutes of pumping out the huge amounts of leaves, twigs and some old eggs appeared:

After the pump had stopped the real work started for us. John was a great help carting away barrowload after barrowload of the filthy stuff - and then he took the very first photos of me as a mud monster:

I'm not ashamed to admit it, I'd had enough by then. We had brought out nearly all of the leaves and twigs, and I was only too ready to leave the rest of the mud in there and to let it be thinned down by the fresh water. We are intending to pump the pond out again in the not too distant future, it should be easier then [no autumn leaves and twigs!].

So, at 20 past 1 I let the water run in again:

We tidied up, cleaned ourselves as best we could [that black gunge sticks like the proverbial - it is of course, largely!], and at half past 2 we finally sat down for lunch, just as the rugby match England v. Italy was starting.

A little later I looked out of the upstairs window and saw that our 13 had gathered again at the edge of the large and empty pond - obviously waiting for it to be full again ......

PS on Sunday, 13th:

No, the pond is not quite full again, it takes a lot longer to fill it than it is to empty it. I'd been looking forward to catching the big whoosh of the ducks flying into the water this morning like in this photo from 2009: