The pool itself, with its unique mix of fresh and salt water became a special and unusual natural habitat playing host to over 100 species of bird icluding regular visitors such as grebe and tufted ducks, siskins and kingfishers. A good supply of food is provided by the fish and eels that enter the pool through the culvert, the larvae in the mud, and the insects that are harboured in the reed beds at the margins of the pool.

The Swanpool Forum, the committee formed to look after the interests of the area, is taking advice from Abbotsbury Swannery in Dorset on how to look after the Swans and improve the chances of cygnets in future years reaching maturity.

The pool's most prized inhabitants are, however, invisible to the naked eye. In the nineties it was discovered that beneath the water lies the the Trembling Sea Mat, a group of primitive microscopic animals called bryozoa which live in underwater colonies and thrive at Swanpool on the balance of salt and fresh water. The Trembling Sea Mat is the only one of its kind in Britain, a fact that has led to the pool being given status as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Swanpool Nature Reserve has it's own website here: www.swanpool.org.uk