Robin's Outdoors

We have a great pond. It wasn’t here when we bought our little house in an overgrown three acre field. The seller announced at the closing that we couldn’t move in because he hadn’t cleaned out the house after his tenant moved. I had no plans on staying in the old house in any longer than necessary. I desperately wanted to be out in the woods with my family, dog, cat, horses and chickens. He said he’d get it cleaned out in a week or so. That was unacceptable. I thought about it for a minute. The seller was a contractor with heavy equipment. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll clean out the house if you’ll dig a small pond for me.”

I expected a small pond. I imagined a 10’ x 10’ pond where I’d grow a few lilies and have a couple of bait fish and some frogs. We picked a wet spot at the edge of the woods, went through the permit process and two months after closing, Mike showed up with a Case 720 backhoe. He designed and dug many ponds before ours and each one has been successful. A day and a half after the digging started, we had a huge hole in the ground with a little water. The 10′ x 10′ square was replaced by a 20’ x 35′ (ish, we’ve never measured it for accuracy) kidney-shaped pond. The sides are very steep so that cattails can’t grow. I’ve seen countless wet spots full of cattails that were once a pond. It’s ugly and I didn’t want that here. The shallow end of the pond is 15’ deep; the deep end is 22’. There’s a huge boulder at the bottom of the deep end, too big to be picked up by the backhoe. I like to think that provides habitat for something but really, it’s unlikely.

Water striders stay on top thanks to surface tension.

The pond was dug in August, a very dry month in Maine. It has no inlet or outlet. We depend on natural springs, of which there are many in this area, and rain to fill the pond. There’s a bit of runoff water going into the pond from the elevated sides. All of the dirt, clay and rocks that filled this gigantic hole were piled around the pond and smoothed out with a bulldozer.  We checked the pond daily to watch the water level rise. It was no where near full when winter set in. The kids were able to slide down the steep side and across the ice. Snow melt and rain fill the pond each spring and it finished filling the first spring.

Between June and August the water level drops drastically and looks like a complete failure. It took a few years but we got used to the half-empty pond and no longer give it much thought. The shallow end drops to approximately seven feet. By December it’s at least three-quarters full. It’s a great place to skate from early January when the ice is thick enough until some time in March when the ice becomes porous and thins.

The water isn’t crystal clear but it’s full of life. We caught hornpout (also called brown bullhead), a bullhead species of catfish, while fishing a summer or two after the pond was dug. They’re tough as nails, and some were still alive when we got home. I stupidly, and I sincerely mean stupidly, put three of them in the pond. It’s the most irresponsible, impulsive thing I’ve done since moving to the homestead. Learn from my mistake. I thought “no harm done, they can’t get out and hurt anything.” True, they can’t get out, but they did take over the pond. We are still trying to get them out a decade later. We’re almost there. I saw one when I fed the fish last night.

Bait, eating catfood

Steve added a few bait fish to eat the mosquito larvae. They’ve reproduced well without taking over the pond and have become a food source for other fish and critters. Leopard frogs, spring peepers, tree and wood frogs, and bull frogs live in or come to the pond. Salamanders are in the pond from time to time. There are Mayflies, damsel and dragonflies, water striders, giant water bugs, water scorpions, back swimmers and diving beetles. Until recently, a snapping turtle called the pond home. I’m hoping a painted turtle will move in and stay.

Bullfrog

Birds come to the pond to eat and drink. Belted kingfishers dive in after the fish. Great blue herons and American bitterns wade along the edge of the water while hunting for frogs and fish. Sandpipers visit, which is interesting because the only place I hear and see them is at the pond. I don’t know where they go when they’re not here. Song birds come to the pond to drink. Ducks, usually woodies and mallards, visit for a day or two each spring. It’s too busy here for the pond to be considered a nesting spot for wild ducks. I thought about putting a wood duck box up for them but the dogs would run around the bank, barking and trying to herd them. It wouldn’t be fair to the ducks and the dogs would drive me nuts.

Two boards float in the pond. They provide protection for baby fish.

Raccoons, rabbits and other small animals drink at the pond during the night. They show up on the game camera but never come out when we could see them.

And once again, we have rainbow trout, but that’s a story for another day.