Despite the onset of autumn the pond is still very active and it is a great way of spending an afternoon, with or without the kids. Visitors have been able to find out more about the edgier inhabitants like the water scorpion and water stick insect.

No pond-dipping expedition is complete without sticklebacks which have also been abundant.

In fact the staff at Radipole Lake recently made a rather macabre discovery of a 3-spined stickleback which was impaled by its largest dorsal spine upon the handrail of the locked gate bridge.

They believe that it could only have been embedded this way through the actions of a kingfisher.

Kingfishers stun or kill their prey by thwacking their heads on hard objects, (like, say, the handrail on the locked gate bridge) before swallowing them head first so that fins and spines fold back and do not impede progress down the gullet.

The staff imagine that in the process of thwacking, the spine penetrated the wood of the handrail leaving the fish high and dry.

The male stickleback is a feisty fellow who prides himself on his near pathological paternal care which wills him to defend his nest and chase off potential predators which are often many tens of times his size. He guards the female’s eggs within the nest and gently fans it with his tail fin to oxygenate the water.

In common with salmon, silver eels and bull sharks, the stickleback has adapted to survive in freshwater, saltwater and the brackishness in between. Rather than scales on their flanks, sticklebacks have bony plates numbering just 4 or 5 in freshwater fish and as many as 30 on their saline brethren.

Based on information supplied by Caroline Hughes.