Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
3.30 p.m., overcast: A few days ago the tadpoles were all in one frothy mass in the corner of the pond. They’re now exploring amongst the pebbles and pondweed but still concentrated in the corner.
Two smooth newts come up for air in the few minutes that I’m writing.
2.30 p.m., 47ºF, 9ºC: It’s been an April showers day with bright sun alternating with wild lashings of rain. There’s a cool breeze from the south-east but the low cumulus clouds are moving in almost the opposite direction: heading east with a westerly wind behind them.
One sixth of the pond in the sunniest northern corner is filled with algae-covered frogspawn which has sunk to a few inches below the surface. The black tadpoles which are each just over a centimetre long have now emerged from the spawn and gathered in three main groups, feeding on the abundant algae.
Nearby amongst the pondweed, two banner-tailed male smooth newts are closely following a round-tailed female.
Near the edge of the pond a newt briefly emerges from the depths to pop a mouthful of air.
A ramshorn pond snail makes slow progress over the butyl rubber pond liner.
A wolf spider runs across the water surface at the edge of the pond then basks in the sun on the black liner.
1.40 p.m., sunny, 51ºF, 12ºC; I counted twenty-seven clumps of frogspawn yesterday and assumed that was it, the party was over, but today the frogs are back in action.
I sneak up on them with an iPad and attempt to record the sound of them croaking and to film them. I find that the iPad is a bit cumbersome to hold steadily so, without making any sudden movements, I retrace my steps to collect camera, tripod and sketchbook.
Hope to upload the movie later.
A pair of siskins feed on the sunflower hearts, just a few yards from me as I sit sketching the frogs.
2.30 p.m., overcast, merest hint of drizzle, 51ºF, 11ºC: Frog activity has started again in the pond. I counted seven but I guess there are ten in all, hidden in corners.
In the branches of the crab apple a greenfinch gives its nasal intake of breath through clenched teeth call – ‘Jeeeez!’
Blue tits continue to take an interest in the nest-box. Two female blackbirds fight it out by the shed. A male hops in between the two of them, as if to say ‘now cool it down.’
There are two frogs at my feet, one clinging to the other at the edge of the pond. I’m relieved to see the elegantly wafting tail of a male smooth newt in the depths below. I did wonder whether the female blackbird that developed the knack of catching them last year had eliminated them altogether.
I cleared overhanging plants and a lot of the pondweed a month ago so if the same female returns this year, she won’t be able to perch on so much emergent vegetation. I’ve left a big clump of pondweed in the deepest section so there’s plenty of room for the newts to hide.
12.20 p.m.: Something is coming up to the surface of the pond; I can see the odd ripple. It’s right in amongst the pondweed, so I suspect that it’s newts that are coming up for air but I’m hoping the frogs will soon start showing themselves.
There’s a clear song from the robin in the crab apple; it makes me think of a clear, cool trickle of water.
It’s so much warmer today, at last starting to feel like spring with the temperature here by the pond at lunch time up at 57ºF, 4ºC with the 
barometer at 30.5 inches of mercury, 1032 millibars, which means we’re in high pressure and the forecast is for it to be dry. It will be a change not to be out drawing in cold damp winter weather.
10.30 a.m.: Snowdrops are at their freshest around the pond so I set up my pop-up tent and start a sketch in the gusting wind and passing showers.
Before the afternoon rain sweeps in I roll up the tent into its dustbin lid-sized bag. I can never quite work out how such as large tent fits into such a small bag but it does, in what seems to me like the most 
illogical and inelegant fashion. I resort to grabbing the writhing figure-of-eight coils and pushing them to the middle. I’ll try and practice with it on a regular basis until it becomes second nature.
11.30 a.m.; The female blackbird has caught another smooth newt and is dealing with it in a corner of the lawn.
The orange on the belly of the newt shows that it’s a male.
Having killed the newt she hops to the middle of the lawn in front of the pond then flies directly to the hedge where she’s nesting amongst the elder, climbing rose, honeysuckle and ivy.
4.50 p.m.; it perches on the debris I’ve raked towards the edge of the pond. Watches for a minute or so then flits to the centre of the pond and catches a dragonfly larva. It takes this into the flower border to deal with, then flies over to the hedge then perches on the top of a gate-post next door before taking to it’s nest in the hedge, approaching from our neighbour’s side, rather than taking its usual route direct from the pond.
Over the past couple of days we’ve seen a female blackbird resting in the middle of the blanket of duckweed that covers most of our pond. She’s not bathing or struggling to get out. This evening I realise what she’s up to.
She grabs a newt from just below the water surface in front of her and immediately flies to an open grassy patch at the edge of the pond to peck at it. I don’t see whether she eats it there and then or whether she takes it off to feed to her young.
I’ve seen her stalking along the edge of the pond on the look out, I now realise, for any unwary newt that might surface. Our resident newts are smooth newts. Unlike the great-crested newts they don’t have special protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act but would this female blackbird care if they did? I think not.
I’ve seen her once before with a successful catch which she took to the raised bed behind the pond. I could see her prey was a long and flexible creature but at the time I couldn’t positively identify it.
This female blackbird is at the top of a pond food chain, at the apex of a food pyramid, but she’s not the top predator around here; she runs the risk of being incorporated into the food chain of one of the local sparrowhawks or domestic cats. 
The newts are predators in their own right; I’ve watched them eating newly emerged frog tadpoles. The tadpoles, at this early stage of their lives, are eating the algae that grows on the clump of frogspawn.
I find it amazing that you can start with sunlight, water and carbon dioxide and in a few links along the food chain end up with a blackbird.
Although my aim is to build a little eco-system in the back garden, I do think that I ought to tweak the chances of survival for the newts by clearing some of the duckweed so that the blackbird can’t sit in wait at the centre of the pond.
Two days later, on Saturday, Barbara spotted the blackbird catching a newts again, five in total. I spent five minutes raking the duckweed to the edges of the pond which should make it impossible for the blackbird to perch in the middle of the pond and give some additional cover to the newts when she is stalking around the margins.
Some memories of Ardsley Reservoir, north-east of Wakefield, from Brian Asquith, a reader of my booklet ‘Walks in the Rhubarb Triangle’;
From 1938 – 1947 my mother and father ran Thirlmere Stores, at the entrance to Thirlmere Drive (now a private house). From my bedroom window I looked out across what we called the Red Wood (you call it Westerton Wood) to the reservoir. During the war trees were felled in the wood and strung across the reservoir to prevent seaplanes landing there.
In the wood was a mine shaft with a wall around 10/12 feet high and we used to lob stones down it and they made a loud noise as they descended the shaft. The larger the stone the louder the noise. Apparently the shaft was sunk around the same time that the reservoir was constructed and the owners were not allowed to tunnel under the reservoir. This apparently ended in a court case which eventually went to the House of Lords. The mine owners lost and the shaft was never used.
There were several ponds in the area, all gone now with the building of so many houses, where we caught sticklebacks. I seem to remember some stringy looking spawn with black hyphens in the middle rather than the spherical black dots of frogspawn which we took to be newt spawn. Later on I think we found it to be toad spawn.
One of the ponds was what we called the Jowett Pond, in Haigh Moor Road, near the entrance to the reservoir but on a map I have, dated 1938, it is shown as Jude’s Pond. Around the reservoir was a ditch where we used to find crested newts but I don’t know if they are still there. We had to climb over the wall surreptitiously as the reservoir was not open to the public in those days.
No doubt you know about Lee Gap Fair, which was a horse fair held at Upper Green, (the western end of Westerton Road, which started with a Royal Charter, in the 12th century and was still going when I was a boy.
The fields it was held in were built over many years ago.
I asked Brian if he was related to the rhubarb-growing Asquith family, or to the prime-minister of a century ago, H H Asquith;
Sorry I am not from a rhubarb family (we used to call rhubarb “tusky” – I don’t know if that is a West Ardsley word or a Yorkshire word). My grandparents worked in the pits. My grandfather Asquith was a miner at Topcliffe pit (Tingley) in, I think, the 1900 census but in the next one for 1910 he was a screen operator, which usually meant you weren’t fit to go down the pit. My mother’s father was also a miner.
My father worked at Armitages Brick Works at Howley Park. I don’t think I am related to HH although, if asked, I usually say that I was born in the same town as him but he was born in the big house, which is now a furniture shop (probably a bit of poetic license), whilst I was born in a terrace house, near Morley park, which is still a terrace house near Morley park.
Link; My booklet Walks in the Rhubarb Triangle
I looked out the other day and there were at least twelve frogs in the pond. Today I counted nine clumps of frogspawn. Usually the spawn is laid at the shallow, sunnier end of the pond. This year it’s all at the overgrown, deeper end, partially shaded by the shed.
Since I wrote this, my neighbour 
Jack across the road has offered me a bucket of spawn which he always clears from his tiny pond. I don’t really need any more but I’d rather take it because otherwise he’d put it in the stream, which is fast flowing so it would just get flushed away into the river. I’m trying to work out if I can fit in a mini-pond or two into the odd corner of my garden as I know ponds have been filled in in adjacent gardens and the frog population will soon start struggling.
Hedgehog Dropping
On a mossy patch of back lawn near the pond there’s a single hedgehog dropping and, a foot or so from that, a clayey fox scat with the typical pointed end.