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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Seasonal "I'm back" (1 Viewer)

Carless

Well-known member
I'm back again. The fish-watching sort of dwindled out in the winter. Most of the natural waters that I'd been looking at were too swollen, and murky to see anything, the fish seem to disappear (actually go deeper) during the winter, and the water is really cold, preventing getting in to have a closer look. But the water has cleared up, warmed up, and fish are active again. We've been feeding the swarms of minnows in a local river. They seem to go for pretty well anything that sinks. My partner described them as acting "like piranha".

The sticklebacks are all in the mating game, with many males coloured up, and many females seriously swollen with eggs. We were watching some in the koi pond in the Uni of Leicester's botanical gardens. Surprisingly (to me) it seemed to be the females that would approached, and be chased away by the rather choosy males. I suppose this is a side effect of it being the male that invests time in building the nest and looking after the young. It was a contrast to see (presumably) smooth newts with the opposite strategy, many males chasing each fat female. Also, while watching newts in a pond, we suddenly saw one about twice as large as all the others with a big serrated crest - we presume a great crested newt.

Finally, we peeked in a bucket of a kid doing some pond dipping in the River Lin. Two stone loach. I've seen fast shapes in the water, but never seen them close before.
 
Welcome back!!!

Looking forward to hearing about your fish watching progress over the summer, as for myself I'm hoping to watch some sticklebacks in the newly cleard brook on my local patch! - haven't seen any for years.

Matt
 
matt green said:
Welcome back!!!

Looking forward to hearing about your fish watching progress over the summer, as for myself I'm hoping to watch some sticklebacks in the newly cleard brook on my local patch! - haven't seen any for years.

Matt

I think now's the time to watch sticklebacks. Certainly with the ones we've seen, one lot in a ditch somewhere near Coalville We were on an infrequent county bus when my son announced he was getting car-sick. So we had to get off in a random village location. I noticed lots of sticklebacks in a ditch, and pointed them out to him in order to take his mind off the nausea. He was particularly taken with a large coloured up male defending its territory. So much so that we had difficulty getting him to leave once we'd remade plans for a cross-country walk to Shepshed.

I'm trying to balance reading up on the native fish so that I can "discover" more. But I've read that the sticklebacks we have colonised freshwater from the sea. But each water system was colonised separately, and the different populations of sticklebacks in different river systems look different. And there's also a "speciation in progress" between sticklebacks that feed at the top of water, and sticklebacks that feed on the bottom, with the two populations sometimes coexisting but not interbreeding.

I've also noted that the stickleback breeding colours in the Grand Union canal appear to emphasise the red underbelly, but with a relatively drab back. But those in the koi pond at the Leicester U. seemed to have less red (mainly only the front of the body) but a much more intense green colour on the back/upper sides.

Going to the other extreme, I was cycling to work as per normal this morning and spotted a pike lurking in the water. There was a Roach or Rudd (I suspect the latter) hanging around a few feet behind the pike too. Not a huge pike, maybe 20-24 inches long. But it's only the second wild one I've seen and the first naturally coloured one.
 
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