As some of you may or may not know I have a pond in my garden (see shed thread for photo). We acquired the pond and it's occupants (gold fish) when we bought our house. Previous owners took water pump, filter and lots of other pond related stuff with them when they moved out (barstewards). We therefore had a crash course in fish and ponds and after several trips to garden centres and our pockets A LOT lighter we managed to keep most of the fish alive.

Our the past year I've got quick attached to my pond and fish. Yesterday to my horror, a big crow (or was it a raven?) was fishing in my pond! No he didn't have a rod, but he did have one of my fish in his beak!! I chased it away, but it flew off with one very juicy goldfish.

The damn thing then came back (about lunchtime!) for seconds. I chased him away before he had a chance to get another.

Anyway, I did some Googling to find out if this was a common problem with crows. I've heard of herons nicking fish but not crows.
I didn't find much, but I did find out crows could be responsible for exploding toads (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/28/exploding_german_toads/)!
The Telegraph with alternative theory and some scary stuff involving crows (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wtoad01.xml).

You may need to put a net over your pond. Now that the bird knows where he can eat on such good fish he will be back all the time. Or get a statue of an owl, apparently they scare other birds away

You definately need a net. We have a large pond (i call it the olympic size swimming pool !!) and when we first moved in we had about 3 fish :unsure: So we bought three more to padd it out a bit, minus a net, and a ba**rst*rd bird came and took 2 of them and left their bodies on the path :sly:

So we bought a very large net, and since then the fishes have bred like crazy. The dogs spend their life trying to count them, and they tell me they have got up to 40, and then lost count :sun:

Spent last weekend putting a net over the pond. Real pain. I'm a bit concerned about how the frogs are going to cope with the net.
Bonsai - do you still get frogs?

Spent last weekend putting a net over the pond. Real pain. I'm a bit concerned about how the frogs are going to cope with the net.
Bonsai - do you still get frogs?

Yep - you still get frogs. We had loads last year .... the dogs didnt eat much of their dog biscuit for days .... i think they were full up :shocking:

Incidentally - you dont need to tie the net tight around the pond - leave some gaps for the frogs to get in / out.