Did you know that birds pant?

Only a few things to report today as the pond is proceeding steadily despite the relentless temperature and aridity of the fifth heatwave this summer. It was kind of gratifying to hear on the radio the other day that (paraphrasing) “one of the best measures you can do in these times is to maintain a pond”, a sentiment that is being entirely validated by the sheer number of animal visitors to our little heatsink.

I didn’t realise birds panted, but they don’t have sweat glands like us humans do, so when it’s 35C outside, as in the above video, they engage in rapid in- and ex-halation to draw the hot moisture from their lungs in a bid to cool themselves down. Now that the fountain is proving to be somewhat of a local ecosystem, the birds are coming more and more frequently to feed and then subsequently drinking from and cooling down by the pond too. I’ve seen magpies, blackbirds (both male and female, they look really different) and pigeons this week, as well as a fox coming by in the early morning hours.

Quick plant and water update: the water hawthorn (Aponogeton distachyos) is definitely thriving, I was pleased to come down and see it has already started blooming a couple days back. This first intrepid flower was joined by a copilot the other day, both standing strong above the water with their peculiar orchid-like buds.

I also innoculated the fountain pond with a small amount of common duckweed (Lemna minor) from my balcony pond. These tiny fronds have started to cover a large part of the surface of my balcony set up so I thought it couldn’t harm to see if it takes downstairs, hopefully it’ll end up mitigating some of the evaporation in heatwaves as such. It seems they’re taking after a couple of days.

And finally here’s everything together, all of the plants seem to be doing very well given the climate. What’s not pictured here is the two new lots of fibre optic plant (Scirpus cernuus) and the three mare’s tail (Hippuris vulgaris) that have gone in, they are doing well to establish themselves just out of shot. The marginals are also all doing steadily on the upper shelf, but I think the floating heart (Nymphoides peltata) might be struggling up there.

Water update for the record, seems like it’s bounced back to typical alkali, high phosphate levels.

	19 Jul	25 Jul	28 Jul	06 Aug	07 Aug	16 Aug
pH	9	9	9	7	8	9
Ammonia	0.25 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm
Nitrite	0 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm	0.5 ppm	0 ppm	0 ppm
Phosphate	1 ppm	5 ppm	1 ppm	5 ppm	5 ppm	7.5 ppm