Country diary: My ponds are teeming with unseen life | Jan Miller

Holywell, Flintshire: The joy of pond-dipping never goes away, and now I'm armed with more knowledge to find out what's in my garden this springI'm dipping into one of our garden ponds on a glorious sunny day, as grasses, buttercups, wild blue geraniums, pink lady's smock and red spikes of sorrel sway in the breeze. I've recently been on a workshop on microscopic pond life, where the tutor, Wyn, was well-practised at using a telescopic-handled golf ball retriever for reaching into the middle of ponds with a tiny sample pot. I bring back my catch and peer through a microscope at a single drop.Rotifers, Desmidiales, Daphnia, Volvox and tardigrades: it sounds like the cast from Doctor Who. But these are a whole world of tiny organisms - some part animal and part plant, most measured in thousandths of a millimetre - that most people never see, and food for many creatures and plants further up the food chain. There are glassy, ghostly ovals, such as Euglena, which use flagellae to whiplash themselves along, or others that exude mucus in order to move. Continue reading...