Do swimming pools attract wildlife?

[Fishboy]

Friends,
This is my first posting to this forum, and I have a question. I'm a biologist, specializing in fisheries. That aside, my wife and I will be living in South Point in the near future and we want to have a pool. My biology-type thinking makes me wonder how that type of oasis will fit with the surrounding ecology. There are birds, a variety of large and small mammals, and an enormous variety of insects that are sustained in an ecosystem that does not include abundant surface water sources. So, my question goes out to anyone with a pool, catchment, or stray 55-gallon drum that collects water:

Do these places attract a variety of wildlife?

Brian (Fishboy)

[Kapohocat]

Our pond does attract a variety of wildlife. It is irregular in shape but approximately 20 x 50. We have a pair of fish herons (at least thats what we think they are), cardinals, and other birds that drink from it. We have an assortment of 8-10 alien and native species of fish. Much to my dismay we have an occassional rat/mouse on the edges. The feral cats take a glance at it - whether they catch anything or not.

-Cat

[Les C]

I've seen a Black-crowned Night-Heron ('Auku'u) at the pond at Kapoho Beach that has the non-releasable sea turtle. There are a lot of fish in the pond that come to the food that the turtle is fed (dog kibble, among other things) and the heron comes down to pick them off when they rise to feed with the turtle. It's kinda like something called commensal feeding, where one animal feeds on other animals that are drawn to or flushed by the feeding of yet another animal. The night-herons are, of course, coming to the pond because of the fish.

This is probably the same as Cat's "fish herons",
http://www.fnal.gov/ecology/wildlife/pic..._Heron.jpg
or
http://www.fnal.gov/ecology/wildlife/pic...Heron2.jpg

The first is an adult 'Auku'u, the second is an immature one. Other than the introduced Cattle Egret, which is white with a rusty wash on the head, the 'Auku'u is the only heron regularly found in the Islands. Great Blue Herons, Great and Snowy egrets show up as vagrants in the Islands.

Les C