Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond
I awoke this morning to BBC 4’s Today programme and Martha Kearney wading through her Surrey home garden pond with John Lewis-Stempel, the well-known and much respected Herefordshire nature writer. Stempel revelled in the depth, breadth and diversity of Martha’s well-established example of a healthy and vibrant good old English pond. When John talked enthusiastically of moorhens and described how a water boatman, the loudest creature on the planet, size for size, stridulates by rubbing its penis against its foreheads, he gained my full attention. I am never far from the many ponds of Wilden Marsh Nature Reserve, so I identified closely with Stempel’s watery subject this morning.
John Lewis-Stemple has written a book titled Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond, and this evening I purchased a Kindle edition.
I have read most of John’s many nature books centred on and around his Herefordshire farm at the western end of the Black Mountains.
North Pond on Wilden Marsh Nature Reserve
The things you hear on the radio these days! I shall investigate this author further, thanks.
I know! Just down the road from you.
I must listen to my water boatmen more carefully.
Listening is good, Tom.