I haven't had a problem with it yet, but that's not to say I won't.
One suggestion (which I didn't follow) is to make sure the whole pond is at least a couple feet deep everywhere. Having shallow ledges just gives herons a convenient place to stand while they depopulate the pond of aquatic animals.
I wanted a place to set potted water plants though.
We did have an incident with a red-tail hawk. I was out chatting with one of the roommates by the pond when it lands nearby, and promptly catches and eats a snake.
The hawk was acting weird and not flying away, so we called up the Audubon society. They said if it looked injured we could try to catch it and bring it in to their office, so we donned welding gloves and every other available kind of PPE and chased it through the bushes and blackberry thickets of three properties before we finally caught it.
Fun fact: hawks are pretty docile when you cover their heads. We expected a fight and try to bite our fingers off but when we got a towel over it's head it pretty much just gave up and we stuffed it in a box and hauled it to Audubon. I'm not sure what happened to it after that; they probably kept it for a week or two and released it once its apparently injured wing was healed. It was an interesting day.
Raccoons do, by scooping (they do not like to stand in the water or swim). The pond has deep areas and we put broken pots and cinder blocks so fish can hide. We also get darker fish which are harder for predators to see. Certain local bird species such as herons do too, but they won’t come under low tree canopy or near the house.
> Raccoons do, by scooping (they do not like to stand in the water
That’s funny, because out here (California) the raccoons will take other food to the water and stand in it while eating. They stand on the steps of pools and dunk their food - presumably to wash it off - between nibbles.
Quite funny to see, and leaves some hilarious paw prints if your pool isn’t clean.
By the way, the French word for raccoon is "raton laveur" which means "washing rat-like-thing". So it looks like they're supposed to wash their food indeed.
It’s possible the pond is too deep (shallowest area is about 8 inches). We have a security camera, which sometimes catches them at night frantically pawing in the water from the edge of the pond to try to catch the fish. But they never go in.
Yep, but fishes will reproduce also until finding some equilibrium. Koi ponds need special needs but non-fish ponds are a very good choice and much better for wildlife.
One suggestion (which I didn't follow) is to make sure the whole pond is at least a couple feet deep everywhere. Having shallow ledges just gives herons a convenient place to stand while they depopulate the pond of aquatic animals.
I wanted a place to set potted water plants though.
We did have an incident with a red-tail hawk. I was out chatting with one of the roommates by the pond when it lands nearby, and promptly catches and eats a snake.
The hawk was acting weird and not flying away, so we called up the Audubon society. They said if it looked injured we could try to catch it and bring it in to their office, so we donned welding gloves and every other available kind of PPE and chased it through the bushes and blackberry thickets of three properties before we finally caught it.
Fun fact: hawks are pretty docile when you cover their heads. We expected a fight and try to bite our fingers off but when we got a towel over it's head it pretty much just gave up and we stuffed it in a box and hauled it to Audubon. I'm not sure what happened to it after that; they probably kept it for a week or two and released it once its apparently injured wing was healed. It was an interesting day.