Animals Found at the Pond

Name of Type of Appearance Food Interesting Facts

Animal Animal
mallard duck bird brown and gray, male has a tadpoles, seeds, pond fly south in fall
green head and yellow bill weeds, and insects

great blue bird light blue with a little black, fish, frogs, salamanders, runs fast, stands very still
heron very long legs and beak small birds, and insects and dips head in water to
catch fish

loon bird black and white with red fish and frogs very ancient species
eyes

swan bird white with a long neck and seeds and pond weeds mate for life
orange bill

Name of Type of Appearance Food Interesting Facts

Animal Animal
snapping reptile brownish, greenish shell, small fish and bad tempered, will bite
turtle sharp beak salamanders

Name of Type of Appearance Food Interesting Facts

Animal Animal
frog amphibian green, wet, and smooth insects has ears under its eyes
has webbed feet
salamander amphibian black with blue or yellow tadpoles, insects, and eggs are in ball of jelly
spots worms

toad amphibian brown, bumpy, and dry flies has a long, sticky tongue

Name of Type of Appearance Food Interesting Facts

Animal Animal
sunfish fish blue with yellow and orange small insects lays eggs in water

Name of Type of Appearance Food Interesting Facts

Animal Animal
beaver mammal brown with a flat leathery plants and tree bark builds dams
tail, big teeth

moose mammal brown, droopy nose, males grasses and leaves very large deer
have antlers called racks

otter mammal brown with a long tail water plants and fish very playful

raccoon mammal gray and black, striped tail, fish, frogs, and can climb down trees head
black mask on face first

white-tailed mammal brown with a white belly and grasses and leaves fawns have white spots
deer white tail
 POND AND LAKE ANIMALS

More than 1,000 species of animals live in ponds

although you are unlikely to find all of them in any
single pond. Almost every group of living creature is
represented, except starfish which live only in the
sea. In a large pond you may find mammals such as
water voles and water shrews and birds like ducks,
herons and kingfishers.

HeronEven the smallest pond will have a population

of amphibians (frogs, toads and newts), small fish e.g. sticklebacks, and a huge variety of invertebrates
(minibeasts). Some of these are herbivores such as water fleas and snails, whereas others are aggressive
carnivores, hunting down their prey, the unfortunate herbivores! One of the largest invertebrate predators
in a pond is the great diving beetle no tadpole is safe when one of these hunters is around! Find out
about another pond dwelling creature on our factsheet Dragonflies.

Many different food chains are to be found in a pond because each animal eats different things.
Because many of these bodies of water are closed environments, they often have self-contained
ecologies, enabling some to become evolutionary microcosms. One such example is the African Great
Lakes, where over a thousand new species of cichlid fish have evolved during the last 12,400 to 100,000
years.

A pond is usually a shallow body of still water. This means that the water does not move as it does in
a stream or a river. Ponds are often formed when rainwater or melted snow collects in a pit in the ground,
or if a stream empties into a large empty area of the earth.
Ponds are smaller than lakes, but are still capable of nurturing plenty of life forms. Apart from pond plants
and weeds, we can also find various types of bacteria and microscopic creatures, fish, insects, amphibians
(such as toads or frogs), birds, reptiles (cold-blooded animals) and mammals (warm-blooded animals). Did
you know that there can be 1,000 or more different types of animal species living in a pond?
 *****

The reason why the animals live in ponds and lakes is that the pond acts as an ecosystem: through the pond,
each of these life forms helps the other creatures to survive in some way. Think of it as a little nature community in
the wild.