The goldfish are spawning - it must be spring!

This past weekend was the Great Backyard Bird Count. (I do hope you counted the birds in your yard.) Yesterday was the last day of the count and I was out in my backyard late in the afternoon, trying to add that last bird to my count. I was sitting by my little pond and I was having a hard time concentrating on the birds because the goldfish in the pond were really rambunctious! They were feeling very amorous and were chasing each other around the pond, the males pressing the females against the ponds edges, trying to get them to expel their eggs. Since I wasn't having much luck photographing birds, I turned my camera on the fish to record their antics.

I'm not in the business of breeding goldfish and, frankly, it is unlikely that any fry would survive in the pond for very long. They would likely be eaten by their parents or by other predators, as some of my adult goldfish have been in the past. There are presently five goldfish in the pond, each eight to ten inches long, and the population has been stable for about a year. They've been in the pond since we first set it up about four years ago.

So, even though I don't expect to have a new generation of goldfish in the pond, I'm glad to see that these fish appear to be happy and healthy enough to at least be interested in producing that next generation.

Oh, yes, I did finally manage to count 33 species of birds in the yard. You can read about them here.