News

Saturday, 21 November 2009

Group Visit: Pond Dipping at Strumpshaw Fen

The last meeting of 2009, on 21st of November, was at Strumpshaw fen to do some conservation work. Despite the terrible whether forecast we had a reasonable turnout and those that came along worked in lovely sunshine for most of the morning. Reserve manager, Tim Strudwick, assigned to us the task to net some weed and invertebrates from some of the ditches on the meadow to stock their new pond dipping area. It can take several years to build up enough life to make a good pond dipping site so we were given the job of helping it along. We hope to return next June to do some pond dipping in the new pond and to see the progress being made. The picture is of a Great Silver Diving Beetle which we caught in one of the ditches. Tim said they are quite rare. We were lucky to catch one and we returned it to where we caught it.