Keston Ponds excursion

Saturday 21st June 2025

This was our second recent excursion to Keston Ponds on Keston Common, which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. They are a good location for pond-dipping, and local member David Linstead has collected and photographed all sorts of interesting specimens there.

Keston Village Hall is not far from the ponds, and has free parking for visitors. There are bus stops outside the Hall, and other buses stop not far away on Westerham Road. We hired the Jubilee Room to set up our microscopes and cameras.

Keston Village Hall

After setting up the equipment, and chatting over tea, coffee and biscuits, Nigel Ashby and Alan Wood walked to the ponds to collect samples and take photographs. The roadside verges have been left uncut, so there were lots of wild plants and insects.

Tyria jacobaeae (cinnabar moth) caterpillars on ragwort

Alan and Nigel walked though the woods beside Fishponds Road to reach a pond that was mostly covered in scum, perhaps cyanobacteria.

Path through the woods

Pond with scum

After taking samples, they crossed the road to a pond with clear water that is popular with anglers and took more samples. There were lots of dragonflies around this pond.

Pond next to Fishponds Road

They also took samples from the last of the three main ponds, before walking back across the Common to the Hall.

Nigel Ashby collecting

Transferring the catch

The samples included two small newts that were returned to the ponds.

Back in the Hall, specimens were soon transferred to slides and to small Petri dishes.

Samples from the ponds

We could see lots of copepods and cladocerans swimming in the samples, but we needed our microscopes to see them properly and to see the smaller specimens such as ciliates, flagellates, desmids, bryozoans and rotifers.

Nigel Ashby with the Watson Zoom Stereo

Nigel and Lisa Ashby (with Watson Microsystem 70)

The Zoom Stereo had a tray of original accessories, including alternative eyepieces and supplementary objectives. It was equipped with a gliding stage, and Nigel had added a slide-in fixed polariser and a rotating analyser.

Watson Zoom Stereo

The Watson Microsystem 70 had ×4, ×10 and ×40 objectives.

Watson Microsystem 70 and chimera digital microscope

Nigel also brought a digital microscope that he had assembled from a variety of old and new parts. The stand was from an old Watson Greenough Microscope with the head replaced with a plate to which Nigel had attached a new Eyoyo monitor and one of the familiar Chinese inspection microscopes. A 0.5× reducing lens was screwed into the camera’s C-mount, and a rotating RMS nosepiece was attached to the lower end of the reducing lens. The nosepiece was fitted with old Watson Para ×4, ×10 and ×15 objectives. For transmitted light, there was an LED light-box on the base of the microscope, underneath a Watson gliding stage with a support for slides or small Petri dishes.

Lisa brought three of the microscopes that Quekett members can borrow for outreach events. A Brunel compound binocular microscope has ×4, ×10, ×40 and ×100 objectives, and a metal case for carrying it. The others were a small stereomicroscope and a digital microscope with built-in LED screen.

Microscopes available for outreach

While sorting through the Quekett’s stores in the Natural History Museum, Lisa found some butterfly wings that a member had donated for outreach. To make them easier to handle and prevent them from blowing away, Lisa had mounted them in glass mounts for 35mm transparencies.

Butterfly wings

Photomicrographs by David Linstead

David and Jane Linstead were not able to spend the day with us, but they dropped in for a chat, and Jane collected some specimens from the middle pond for David to photograph at home.

In the gallery below, click one of the small photos and you will see a larger photo with more information. On the large photo, click > or < at right and left to see the next and previous photos, or click at top right to start a slide show, or click at top right to return to the gallery.
You can also use the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard to move between the large photos, and the Esc key to return to the gallery.

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Ben Jarvis, Biodiversity Manager at IdVerde, for permission to collect specimens from the ponds on Keston Common, which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Report and photographs by Alan Wood, photomicrographs by David Linstead.

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