We went out on a walk this afternoon (we’re trying to up our paces as part of our get fitter campaign). As well as the usual sightings of a collection of water birds, we saw something I’ve never seen before.
As we went over the first of the bridges over the water on our way, we noticed large numbers of fish. The picture doesn’t do them justice, it shows a patch about 2 meters wide, but if you can imagine a 10m wide channel solid with fish of a range of sizes as far as the eye can see forwards and backwards from the bridge, that’s what there was.
To the shallow side of the gap were small fish (3-4cm long) and, as the water got deeper across the gap, so the fish got larger up to 15cm I would guess. I have no idea what sort of fish they are, nor why they should be there but, it was quite astounding, something I’ve never seen before and which explains how the diving birds (cormorants, grebes and herons for example) survive in the area.
As we walked around and went back over another bridge into the car park, there were fish again. Not as large a shoal and without the range of sizes but nonetheless a significant number of fish. Whether they are always there and we just happened to notice them, I don’t know but I’ll certainly look again next time.
