Is nature a curse as well as a blessing?

Nature is good for us. Over the past year, an appreciation of the natural world has been one of the rare positives to emerge from the pandemic. We have become more in tune with our surroundings, discovering the joys of birdsong in traffic-deserted urban streets and taking long walks in the countryside.

And if we hadn’t noticed it ourselves, fortunately a new piece of research appears every few weeks to tell us about how much we are engaging with nature, and how great it is for our souls. Almost as great as having the bleeding obvious shoved down your throat by a bored academic.

Still, I don’t dispute the importance of the point, nor do I deny that I am among the millions of people who have found relief and release in the flora, fauna and phenomena that are all around if you only know where to look or what to listen for. In particular, I have appreciated darkness more than I ever did in pre-pandemic times; and I have become almost as obsessed with birds as I am with finding the secret to folding a fitted sheet to perfection.

Inspired by Springwatch during the first lockdown, I agreed, at my children’s request, to create a pond. I bought a pre-moulded thing for 30 quid: it was only a tiddler – less than a metre square, but it was all we had space for. With the kids’ help, I dug a hole in a useless corner of the garden and tucked it in, before adding a couple of buckets full of rainwater and some plants from an online supplier. 

After just a few weeks, we saw tiny critters swimming in it and our hearts were all of a flutter. Tadpoles, we wondered? Mosquito larvae, as it turned out. Soon after, the water began to get murky with algae. I began to curse Chris Packham.

But with the addition of some more oxygenating plants, the pond soon began to look more hopeful, and then – joy of joys – a frog was spotted. Then another, and another! The kids gave them names: Trevor, Delores and Jayden. In the summer, we spent happy times watching them as they basked with their eyes and noses above the water’s surface.

We thought the pond couldn’t become more exciting. Then came a battle with blanket weed, which was, if not thrilling exactly, certainly engrossing – and may not be over. And in February this year, we spotted what we had hoped for from the moment our amphibian friends had first arrived: frogspawn.

Gelatinously revolting as it may be, we treated it as if it contained our own thousand babies. After hard frosts, I gently made holes in the ice to ensure sufficient oxygen beneath. As the weather warmed and the pond once again began to be dominated by algae, I made a mercy dash to the garden centre for more plant life. And praise be, the critters at last wriggled free of their spunky bubbles and began to explore.

On sunny afternoons, the tadpoles congregate in corners, munching algae as if they are in an all-you-can-eat buffet. I check on their progress, removing strands of blanket weed and scaring away the pigeons that are on the prowl for a tasty meal of their own.

Last Wednesday I saw something flash under the surface, much bigger than the other tadpoles, about as thick as my little finger. Had an early developer begun to metamorphose? I was certain I had seen little legs. But no, it didn’t look quite right.

Now I saw another: a slim, speckled body, with two pairs of legs sticking out, and a long tail. Newts! I ran in to tell the family, full of glee. This was even better than the frogs, and I thought of myself following in the footsteps of a long line of newt fanciers: Ken Livingstone, Gussie Fink-Nottle and, well… never mind.

I gazed at these two little critters as they explored their surroundings, apparently very much at home, and I thought of how we had lovingly created this place for them, and for their froggy friends; not to mention pond snails, water boatmen and a whole host of other watery beasts. I was a nature curator: I felt calm and content.

Wait, though. Don’t newts prey on tadpoles? I stopped taking adoring photographs and reached, panic-stricken, for Google. Sure enough, like almost every other animal and bird, newts love the taste of a juicy tadpole – and here they had a feast, just wriggling jauntily all around them, asking to be scoffed. Argggghhhh!!

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Could I do anything? Could I offer the newts an alternative snack – some bread and cheese perhaps? Some curried lentils? A pie? Alas, there was no answer but to let nature take its course.

And so that is what I am doing: nervously watching; waiting in hope – anxious for the beautiful newts to stick around, but desperate for a few of their prospective snacks to be given a chance to turn into froglets.

Nature might be good for us. But it can be a wild ride.