There’s a bond in pond again

I WAS tidying up the small pond on the patio — taking out the algae that had grown in the warm weather and weeding the margins — and I noticed the number of goldfish had dwindled down to one, a plump yellow fish that had become rather reclusive, spending most of its time in deep meditation under a fringe of aubretia that had grown down into the water.

I had been rather neglecting the pond. Some of the fish may have died of natural causes, some not. There’s a feral tom cat in the area who’s an expert fisherman. Anyway, I felt a bit guilty and I thought some company might jolt the surviving fish out of his melancholy so I headed for the garden centre and returned with a plastic bag of water with five small orange fish in it. An investment of €7.50 in the social life of a fish.

The pond is actually two connected by a narrow channel — I extended it a couple of years ago. The yellow survivor lived in the left hand pond, which is slightly larger and deeper, so I decided to release the orange fish in the right hand pond, just in case it wasn’t love at first sight. I opened the plastic bag and stood it in the water for 15 minutes to ensure the new fish wouldn’t suffer from thermal shock. Then I gently tipped the bag on its side so they could swim out if they wished.

They did and they seemed quite startled by what they encountered. Goldfish are neither as stupid nor as forgetful as they’re supposed to be. Some goldfish even learn to recognise their owners and to tell them apart from other people. These newcomers had spent their entire lives in a glass tank. Now they were in a pond many times larger with water plants, a waterfall and a resident frog. It’s no wonder they were a little startled.

They spent about 10 minutes exploring their strange new surroundings and then, one after another, they slipped through the channel into the larger pool on the left. The survivor came out from under the aubretia looking equally startled. He was four times the size of the newcomers and had become rather stout. Despite this he showed a fair turn of speed as he chased the first of the new arrivals round his territory. But when four more arrived he became distracted.

Goldfish are cyprinid fish, relations of roach and rudd and carp, and by nature they like to live in shoals. But the shoaling instinct obviously doesn’t kick in immediately, particularly if there’s a significant size difference. Everything was quite frenzied for an hour or so. Though I managed to introduce some relative calm by putting in goldfish food.

Luckily 24 hours later they had made friends and were all bunking in together.

Nature Table

GERMANDER SPEEDWELL

(Veronica chamaedrys)

Germander speedwell is either a common and attractive wild-flower or a weed, depending on where it’s growing. It’s a member of the Veronica family and, like the other speedwells that grow in Ireland, some of which are water plants, it has distinctive sky blue flowers with four petals in the form of a broad, upright cross. The lower petal is smaller than the others and two long stamens project from the pale centre of the flower. It is a creeping perennial plant with hairy serrated leaves on short stalks and the flowers are carried on longer stalks that grow from the junction of the leaf and the stem.

It’s in flower at present, is , and has been for a month or so. It’s widespread in woods, hedgerows, grassland, waste-land and gardens. One of the two small ships accompanying the Mayflower on the Pilgrim Father’s voyage to America was called the Speedwell. Twice she caused the fleet to return to England because she was leaking badly as a result of sabotage by nervous crew members.