What's your Winter pond like?

It looks great in the summer! I’ve just taken my net back off! I’m going to post some photos so you can see! My pond is a little brown as it rained this morning and washed some surface soil in!

I think the net and all those sticks make it look worse than it actually is.
I'm glad your fish are surviving.

It looks lovely in summer with you.
I haven't got a pond.

funnily enough ours looks asleep. With only a few fish in it and only one pale they are hard to see but they were feeding today.

Ours is overflowing into the lawn and there is now a wide band of moss round it. The baskets are overgrown and need redoing and the pondweed needs sorting as well. Not a job anybody looks forward to!

The netting is still over my ponds catching leaves blown into my garden from the woods. The water pumps are off but will go back on late March or early April. My air pump has been continuously running 24/7 for 3 years now providing an opening in the ice in winter and extra oxygenation in the hot summer in all the ponds. The fish are inactive and suspended in the water like balloons on strings. I took a census the other day and they seem to be all there as opposed to several years ago when a mink took every fish out of my ponds with not one left. There is enough natural food(fresh water crustations, algae, leeches, small snails...etc) growing on the walls of the ponds for the fish to nibble on as they come out of their cold induced stupor with supplemental pellet feeding to start when the water temperature hits 50F.

wildlife in all its glory then Loosestrife. I lost lots of mine to a herring gull and then half a dead duck put paid to the majority!
my dozen or so were the only survivors from over 40 fish and some were 25yrs old or more.

A heron had mine- missed one the first tie and came back for it later. I give up on fish.

The netting is there to keep some of the leaves off. Trees are lovely but as we have grown older the trees have grown with us and collecting fallen leaves in Autumn is a chore. This year we haven't been so conscientious in disposing of them, as you can see in the first image. The pond is in a "hidden" area so it's been left somewhat this year.

Heron are a nuisance though we had fish eaten by mink once. Animal liberators freed them on to the heath! Chickens were taken, cygnets, and pond fish. At least it was assumed that the former were taken by mink though someone reported seeing a very large cat(!!)

We have also lost baby fish to grass snakes. Actually saw one in the pond and wondered what a long piece of rope was doing there!

The Iris need clearing as they have finally gone brown must get those cut back before the other plants start to shoot, the water has cleared well over winter and we can see the fish resting near the bottom, guess one could say its doing okay...Bit boring actually...

I don’t cover my pond. Yesterday I managed to get the worst of the leaves out using a lawn rake, and left them at the side incase any critters wanted to escape.

Our pond is silent and still with rather too much 'fairy moss' on it! The sparrows use a shallow part to have a wash which is nice to see.
Like me, it comes to life in the spring and summer!