Kitchen Garden Forum

Our local crow is raiding our mini pond. He stands on the edge of the pond, yanks out all the blanket weed within reach and then proceeds to pick off all the tadpoles caught up in the weed. I suspect that a couple of the newts have fallen victim to his attacks too. Every morning I'm finding a fresh lot of dried out blanket weed strewn all round the edge of the pond. I wouldn't mind but he's never around mid summer when the tadpoles have migrated and the blanket weed really needs clearing!

Corvids are clever, they wander round the field next door to me flipping over the sheep doings and eating whatever has crawled underneath! You could try sprinkling bits of tinned dog food on the blanket weed in summer and see if it works!

Our resident male blackbird also fishes for tadpoles at the edge of the garden pond, especially when they are enjoying the warmer water in the shallow end. As there appear to be hundreds of them, I don't suppose we shall notice much difference in the number of frogs!