Pond Life - Little and Large

First the little. Some Ostracods I found near the edge of my raised pond. They are large enough to be seen as tiny brown dots moving around in the water. These crustaceans live in a hard shell which is in two parts. In the second clip, top creature, you might just see the thin opening when it moves about. This shell closes when it senses danger. The video was made under a 3.5X objective lens on my microscope.



For the large - what could be more beautiful than ..



.... a water lily.

Little and Large

First the microscopic object. A Tardigrade (water bear) I found in the moisture taken from a clump of moss, about 150 microns long (150 thousandths of a millimetre)



Second, a beasty quite a few (thousand) time larger:



A field cricket which ended up on my kitchen windowsill.

Life in Moss

I picked up a bit of moss kindly thrown on my path by a bird. It was placed in a small petri dish and soaked with boiled tap water for a few hours:



Then the moss was removed and squeezed to drip some of the moisture in another dish. Now a small amount of that liquid was picked up in a pipette and a drop or two placed on a microscope slide. With the naked eye only a few minute dots could be seen in the water. After adjusting the lighting the sample was viewed to see what microscopic life could be found and photographs taken. Here are a few:

A nematode:


Probably a rotifer:


An as yet unidentified creature:


I must try this again with some moss from a different place.

Microscope Camera

I decided to purchase a Swift EC5R camera which is designed to replace the eyepiece on a microscope:

/>

The software which comes with the camera will run on Windows or Mac OS and allows the user to take photos or video clips. I picked a small clump of pond weed from the edge of my raised pond to put under the microscope.



For scale the strands of weed are just under 1mm wide.

Blooming Beautiful

Just a quick post to keep the blog active. I have been trying out a photo app on my newly acquired DooGee Note 58 mobile phone and found a water lily which was partly open:



This DooGee may not be as all singing and all dancing as a Samsung Galazy or iPhone 15 but does remarkably well for the princely sum of £99.98. I have had a DooGee tablet for a year and found it to be really reliable, again at the fantastic price of £128. If the weather is kind on Sunday I hope to use the phone to take some video at the Lincolnshire Wolds Railway.

Wren Inspects Nestbox

A Wren has inspected the nestbox two days running.



This is a Birdfy nestbox which has two cameras so I can see birds ariving and leaving as well as any interior activity. It looks as though the Wren removed a dead fly while it was there.

Two Magpies and an Egg

This chicken egg cracked as soon as I put it in a pan to boil. As the contents started to spill out I cooled the egg and put it in the garden to see whether the Magpies would be interested in it. (No sound on this camera)



The Badger seems to have moved on. It hasn't visited for over a week. Its new living area under the shed was invaded by rats. Probably from nearby arable land. The rats have been eliminated but the Badger hasn't returned.