Our Mt. Shasta pond, Dragonfly Roost, Summer 2008

We weren't able to visit our McCloud home on the sides of Mt. Shasta during June, but we were able to spend nearly 2 weeks there in July.
With a new camera to play with, we started recording the pond and it's visitors.

Early July, 2008 - the pond the morning we arrived.
The hose is our 'low-tech' way of making up for evaporation at this point: we just leave a drip going while we are away. The hose comes directly from our solar-pumped well.

The pond was FULL of polywogs which began turning into froglets and emerging from the pond.
The one below is growing its legs, but still has a tail and is still living IN the pond (it's underwater).

See if you can count/guess the number of froglets in the photo below - then click on it to see if you were correct!

Also emerging from the pond were numerous 4-spotted and 12-spotted Skimmer dragonflies!
Click on the dragonfly names above to see pictures of those species, and
click on the word "emerging" below to see some images of the dragonflies emerging!
We had between 2-5 dragonflies emerging each day.

California Tortoiseshell Butterflies were coming in by the thousands!
Their caterpillars denuded the ceanothus and then climbed the house walls to become chrysalis.
Here a Lorquin's Admiral came in to 'puddle'

We moved one of the logs from beside the pond to partly inside the pond and planted more plants in the 'bog' end of the pond, and redirected the hose to enter there.
This not only helped to make the pond look more natural but also the plants helped keep the algae down because of the plants's intake of the nitrogen from the water, before it went from the shallow 'boggy' area into the main part of the pond..

But the best part of having the pond continues to be the wildlife it attracts! Click on any link below to see images:
deer (including cute fawns - birds - dragonflies

It was a delightful summer!