Note: House Circuit posts are drawn from the many 50 metre walks I make every day around our house.
Outside the sitting room window we have a large, waist-height black bin which fills with water and mosquito larvae. To reduce the mosquito problem I bought two fish last year, a goldfish and a shubunkin (which is a type of goldfish). These fish of the carp family are omnivores, eating both insects and plants. The goldfish seems to have disappeared, but the shubunkin looks happy and healthy and I say hello to it every day. I add various water weeds with their attached fauna to the bin if I bring examples from my field trips and the whole makes a low-maintenance ecosystem.
Shubunkins, with their characteristically mottled colours, were bred in Japan just over 100 years ago (the name is Japanese for 'red brocade'). Amazing how one can get quite fond of a fish (see centre left below). The object in the water on the right is, I think, a dead leaf.
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