Pondlife

A Memory of Southborough.

From the 1930s, when I first saw it from a pram to about the 1960's, Holden Pond was a wonderful place for wildlife. Each March hundreds, maybe thousands, of frogs and toads, hopped and crawled there to breed. The water was clear, and from the roadside you could see them swimming about on the bottom among Canadian pondweed, along with smooth and palmate newts. Weeks late,r the water would be black with shimmying tadpoles. Once, I also saw a grass snake and lizard basking close to each other on a grassy bank, above the pond. The only downside, was the many toads run over crossing the road. There were fishes too, of course, but the pond was not overstocked with the large carp whose foraging, now annihilates aquatic plants and by stirring up mud and detritus has turned what was once clear water into an opaque, unhealthy-looking soup. Nor, I believe, were there so many ducks as there are now. No wonder few frogs and toads still survive.

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