And you can see loads of fish! A friend told me there are perch in the river so I looked them up and see that they are the stripy ones I catch sight of sometimes, but I wonder if the others might be gudgeon? These are little fishlets but the bigger ones were a browny/grey colour, silvery underneath.
They were darting around together but I noticed every so often, one would swim on the spot, head downwards, tail up to the surface. Then another would join it and maybe one or two others so you had a little group that looked like synchronised swimmers. Does anyone know why they do this?
3 comments:
Well, I don't know the answer to your question but I thought you'd like "fishy facts" :-)
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/marine/education/faq/FishyFacts
Sue, nb Indigo Dream
You are unlikely to see gudgeon up in the water, they live on the bottom. They have a gorgeous titanium blue sheen on their flanks sometimes. In Victorian times, toffs would hold gudgeon parties on the Thames, fishing from punts and cooking up the catch like whitebait.
Lots of small fish look pretty much the same until they get older.
Perch look handsome, but they will start mercilessly eating the others when they get a bit bigger.
Thanks for the link Sue, I hardly know anything about fish. Interesting to read that 'Nearly all daylight fish have colour vision - that is at least as good as a human' But no answer to the vertical head-down swimming on th spot!
Ok, I now know that the little fish aren't gudgeon - thanks Neil. Maybe baby perch don't have stripes til they are bigger.
Carrie
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