Pond dipping At Lodge Lake in Milton Keynes

At the British Bird Fair earlier in the month we bought my daughter (4) a pond dipping kit. With the lake just around the corner we thought this would give me and my baby girl something else to do occasionally, well today was our first trip out to have a try. Myself, Zoe and our little girl all went (well why not it was a bank holiday).

Pond dipping

We tried a number of spots and saw a lot of tiny things swimming around in the water (not sure I could identify any of them apart from pond snail) but none were particularly rewarding with anything large, the area near the bank seemed quite deep or stony depending on the spot we stopped at.

Our first tray of creature (no idea on any of them)

Bo examining things closely

We did find at least one leech, and a strange insect the seemed to be living inside a shell like contraption stuck fast to a small twig (no clue what this was). Even with our handy pond dipping book.

Of note in the area were Brown Hawker, Migrant Hawker and Common Darter in increasing numbers, as well as some quite late Mallard ducklings.