Landscaping techniques that discourage garden predators
If we were in the fortunate position of being able to capitalise on hindsight and were effortlessly able to re-landscape our water garden, we might take a page out of a Victorian garden design journals in which we hardly see a pool or pond whose water level is not at least six inches below the edging and designed as such. This would solve the problem of cats and herons.
A high edging makes a cats ambitions more difficult to achieve.
Alternatively a low wall that doubles as a seat keeps cats out of reach of the water. Egress and ingress for small wildlife must however be incorporated in the construction. I was once commissioned to make a wall like this into a toad hotel with sitting rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms - of course there was a communal bathroom!
(A picture of this can be provided on DISC if you want)
It might be less bother to have a low picket fence. Not so comfortable to sit on but it helps keep children safe; another ingredient that doesn't mix with water.
If there is a rock edge to the pool, next to the pool the rocks could be of enough depth to keep the meddlesome paws away from water level.
Using 'soft landscaping' techniques i.e. using plants, a wreath of spiky, thorny plants growing around can be visually effective particularly amongst rocks or gravel. There are thorny Berberis of red, yellow and green leaves. They also come dwarf, evergreen and with stunning yellow or orange flowers. Once established as an impenetrable thicket the soil beneath becomes a 'no go area' of insidious discarded thorns.
Ulex or common Gorse, in the not so common forms of Ulex galli and Ulex flore pleno 'Plenus', form neat uncomfortable hummocks. Here again you have yellow.
For an endless variety of stunning colour that will cover everywhere and make it impenetrable for pussies are the Roses, especially those classified as ground cover roses and my particular favourites being among the County series.
The pool planting itself can work as a deterrent too as there is nothing better to hinder feline type predators than a good solid planting of marginal plants in baskets just below the water surface. This is unfortunately excellent cover for the heron.
Cats
Cats have been with us since time immemorial. The convenience of having man as the provider of sustenance, either directly or indirectly, keeps a good population of moggies thriving in all communities around the globe. As a result, they have time on their paws. Time to lie back and watch the busy world stream by. In the same way as we waste hours watching the world as seen in a television box, the cat will happily watch the world in a hole in the ground with water in it. It is just as dramatic and it is more interactive than even digital TV. At the moment with TV, we can only turn it on and turn it off, turn it up or turn it down or press the red button. But with a pool, if you really like something you can hook it out.
It is the curiosity that gets them going to start with. If you can catch them at an early stage then you might be able to prevent a problem developing. Based on another old adage :- "A scalded cat fears cold water." Or from an old Somerset gardener I knew years ago:-"If you catch 'e doin' it, just boot the bugger in!" Early action reinforces the message to produce the situation referred to in another old saying :- "The cat loves fish but dares not wet her paws."
Cats, in general, hate water and hate getting wet if they are dry. If dunking them in the water seems to be taking the philosophy of 'having to be cruel to be kind' too far, or the animal exits more rapidly than your intentions can materialise into action, arm yourself with one of those "MEGA-BLASTER SUPA-SQUIRTER" -you know the type of water pistols. Then dealing with the problem becomes fun.
An armed guard with super-squirters.
Herons
This of course is no deterrent to the heron, which is the epitome of patience. It will wait unseen until it knows you are not in the vicinity. It is intelligent enough to learn your routine of when you are about, when you get up, when you go to work and so on. If you change that routine that is when you catch him unawares. When you do see him next to your pond there is a strong sense of a mixed blessing since you cannot help feeling that it has been a privilege to see something so graceful so close to home.
Ducks
Ducks can be a mixed blessing as well. Generally they arrive for a stop-off style visit that may be a reconnoitre expedition for a more permanent abode, or it may just a fuel-stop. Either way, they are going to exploit the territory for its natural resources (a bit like an invasion by the Americans). At first they look as though they belong and I am sure you would welcome them with open arms if first of all the frog spawn wasnt vacuumed into their cute little interiors, then it is the fish if there are any and the fresh new growth of all the underwater plants is similarly despatched. Then as the rest of the estate is examined in detail, all the new shoots of the marginals either get trampled or tested for food potential. I love ducks and keep them myself, and I know from experience that wildlife and fish in ponds do not get much of a chance to co-exist with ducks about unless the pond is big, not necessarily lake size, but bigger than most modern suburban gardens are today.
So visiting ducks need to be discouraged from visiting again as soon as they call.
(TRANNIE 250: Ducks! Here comes trouble!)
OTHER FOWL
I am thinking mainly of coots and moorhens here, although they are fairly shy of humans, they can install themselves on quite large ponds even in towns.
The moorhen, Gallinula chloropus, is the one with the red forehead, red beak with a yellow tip. It also has a white line of feathers along its flanks and a flash of white at the tail end.
The coot, Fulica atra, apart from a white forehead and beak, is all black.
Coots are not greedy birds and do not confine themselves to feeding in the water, but as you can see from this contented bird nesting in the Long Water at Hampton Court Palace during the flower show, they like to make themselves comfortable, here using the abundant resource of lily pads. Could you afford that?
Otters or mink
The otter making a comeback in many parts of the UK, pushing out the mink in select habitats, which may account for some pond attacks.)
Otters are a privilege to have around. These like mink are river dwellers and you have just been unfortunate in being included in the bank side run that can stretch for up to 2miles. On the other hand, the visit may be just a one off by an itinerant male on the search for new hunting grounds. The only way of dealing with it is by discouragement.
Mink are a different proposition. Try to figure out where they might be coming from (they are generally living near waterways) and then contact the relevant warden or gamekeeper for that area. They will be more than willing to help all they can. Even if they are actually living on your land, many fisheries and game wardens will be keen to trap or shoot them for you in order to deal with the problem before it spreads to their land or waterways.
Some people say they are not in fact the problem that they have been made them out to be, although they may have been responsible for the demise of the water vole. But if you have them raiding your pond it is not something you will feel convinced about. As with the otter, the disappearance of your fish may be the work of a transient male on the move over the countryside looking for a territory. They wont settle on a small pond since they need several miles of riverbank to feel at home.
The otter is a much larger animal than the mink making almost 80cm in the body alone with a 45cm tail, whereas the mink is only 40cm with a 14cm tail. The size of the tail is significant with the otter when viewing track marks since it tends to be much more evident as it is dragged through the tracks, particularly in its walking gait. The footprint of the mink tends to be more splayed and more apparently webbed. The otter very often when moving across open ground, it bounds in the same way as a weasel, but in stretches of almost 50cm. The footprints from these bounds, if they can be spotted, will grouped very closely in fours. The mink staggers its back feet.
Badgers
Badgers tend to get branded with all the crimes of nature inflicted modern man, whether it passing TB onto cattle to raiding chicken sheds and destroying flocks of birds in one visit. Water gardens is one area in which their talents for acquiring sustenance, if the anecdotes are to believed, display an ingenuity second only to chimpanzees. Apparently they will paddle around in a pool sucking up vast gobbets of frog spawn with the same sort of relish that some individuals display for oysters.
Deterrants
The myth that plastic herons deter the real thing keeps the plastic heron industry thriving.
But if we cannot be personally patrolling our water garden territory 24/7, and we are constantly being raided by a hoard of wayward moggies then there are some very simple practical measures we can take to help the fish help themselves. A fish hide is one such facility, in the form of a concrete slab on the bottom of the pond raised up on bricks. Alternatively large bore pipes laid on the bottom. These make fairly secure refuges away prying paws and beaks.
One traditional method of deterring herons is to run a line of fishing line supported by pegs or wires around the edge of the pond. This works on the theory that heron always approach the pond and step into it. With the way that the heron walks by bending its leg backwards and lifting its foot, a relatively low line little more than 10inches or 25cm high is enough to deter them. Thats the theory, but I have met so many people that tell me that when hunger reinforces determination, they have seen herons make light of any such obstructions by simple hopping over them into the pond. Then the pond keepers resort has been to make a crisscross pattern over the pool with the nylon thread. This looks ugly but or the large part proves effective apart from one lady I met in Bristol who claimed to see a heron hovering like a kestral over her pond whilst darting its beak at the fish.
Anti-heron deterrent wires like telegraph poles and electricity cables mar any semblance to any natural water garden.
When it comes down to it, a net over the pond probably offers as much protection from most predators as you can create, especially for the winter.
There are plenty of burgular style alarms that respond to body heat or movement on the market that warn you of intruders into your garden, but the products that actually protect the pond on the market, rather than just alert you to an intruder very often use sound in the form of ear-piercing blast of high frequency noise that terrifies cats, badgers and suchlike but is inaudible to humans and unfortunately herons. And that is bad news for those of us who are looking for a dual-purpose cat and heron scarer.
SCARECROW is a heat activated device that when confronted by a warm body bursts into life chattering rattling dementedly and spraying a jet of water in an arc over all unsundry within 30ft and in a 30 swathe. This combines all the ingredients necessary to inhibit all unwelcome visitors except kids. Kids will love it.
The scarecrow was originally devised as a deer scarer in the States, but has proved to be the most efficient and entertaining heron scarer in the UK, and it waters the lawn at the same time.
JAPANESE DEER SCARER (SHISHI ODOSHI). If this works it is probably the most aesthetic feature for keeping herons and cats away. It needs a very small pump to supply water to the end of a bamboo pole, very often delivered through another bamboo tube. The pole is balanced on another pole or rod that acts as a fulcrum and as water is delivered to one end it fills with water, it becomes top heavy and tips and deposits the water into the pond. When this is done the pole quickly returns to its former position and in the process the far end stricks a stone making a loud clack. It might however drive the neighbours insane, but perhaps not as insane as the next product will..
The Japanese Deer Scarer, Shishi Odoshi, in the process of emptying into the pool immediately prior to tipping back and striking a small stone and filling up again. The Pondguard Heron Scarer is primed, looking very innocuous just in front.
PONDGUARD Heron Scarer. This is specifically marketed as a heron scarer although I havent seen it around for some time. There is an extended trip line which a heron cannot avoid touching as it approaches a pool. When it is touched it produces a startling bang from a percussive cap (It is in fact a complete roll of toy gun caps.) This is accompanied by a device that suddenly flashes a pair of eyes in a cat shaped silhouette. After it has been triggered it needs resetting and reloading with caps.
A cat would probably get wise to it eventually and it needs to be reset every time it is set off. But that one big fright may be enough to do the trick permanently and then you are left with a dynamic conversation piece at your midsummer barbecue, although I dont think the neighbours will be that impressed with it somehow.
When we are getting into the realms of seriously solving the problem we are resorting to THE POND PROTECTION KIT.
This is back to the 'cruel to be kind philosophy' as it consists of surrounding your pond with an electric fence. Wilf Starsmore, the inventor, has made the concept a reality without making the pool look too much like Stalag 17. The poly wires that carry a small current, that is enough to deter and not to maim, are suspended in little looped rods just above the water level. It can be powered by battery or mains and costs about 4.00 a year to run and does the job - no messing !
When I made that comment in the text about the Starsmore Pond Protection Kit to deter herons, I hadnt realised that the Germans had already copied the idea!
The simplest purchase has to be the joke snake that Alan Titchmarsh ("Gardeners World", BBC1) recommended. Just take one rubber snake, curl it up as though it were nonchalantly passing the time of day in a strategic part of the garden. Hey presto! Garden minus cats