Wikipedia: The Heideteiche near Osterfeld are a nature reserve in the town of Osterfeld and the municipality of Meineweh in the Burgenland district in Saxony-Anhalt. The nature reserve with the registration number NSG 0202 is around 66 hectares in size. Around 26 hectares of the nature reserve are also designated as an FFH area "Waldauer Heideteich- und Auwaldgebiet". The area has been under protection since 2001 (date of decree: April 19, 2001). The responsible lower nature conservation authority is the Burgenland district. The nature reserve is south-east of Osterfeld in the Saale-Unstrut-Triasland Nature Park. It is characterized by a wetland with a swampy alder forest with panicle sedge and gossip that is unique in the region, and in the area of a spring bog of a small extent a swampy birch forest with wood rush, horsetail, angle, bank, swamp and beaked sedge and thorny male fern. In the area of the nature reserve there are gray willow bushes, black alder, downy birch and silver birch. A stream flows through the nature reserve, which flows into the Steinbach, a tributary of the Wethau, near Waldau. There are six dammed ponds along the stream, the Kleine Heideteiche. In the east of the nature reserve is the artificially created Great Heath Pond, which is surrounded by reed beds with reeds, broad-leaved and narrow-leaved cattails, thorny thorntails and canary grass. The ponds were created for fish farming in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the south of the protected area there is a wet meadow created by extensive mowing, which has the remains of a moor grass meadow with moor grass, blue-green, yellow, millet and hedgehog sedge, devil's bit, medicinal zest, caraway-leaved silge, meadow silage, marsh yarrow, cuckoo campion, common horn trefoil and cuckoo flower. There are also viper tongue, autumn crocus and Siberian iris, as well as orchids such as tigerweed and broadleaf cuckoo flower. In the nature reserve also settle i.a. Broad-leaved orchid, marsh violet, marsh pippau and lesser valerian, and creeping willow. Aquatic and marsh plant communities settle in the heath ponds with water knotweed-floating spawning communities and the southern bladderwort community, which e.g. be accompanied by thousand leaf, water buttercup and crested spawnweed. Other species include pond horsetail, bristling loosestrife, bright broom and wild rice. The waters in the nature reserve are the habitat of loaches and mustard loaches. Amphibians and reptiles are represented by smooth and mountain newts, common and spadefoot toads, common, water and tree frogs, sand and wood lizards, slow worms and grass snakes. The nature reserve is also an important habitat for the avifauna. Marsh harriers, little grebes, pale, moor and water rails as well as great and reed warblers live in the reed beds. The marsh forests are habitat for marsh, willow and penduline tit, lesser woodpecker and nightingale, while lapwing, partridge, red-backed shrike, yellow wagtail, meadow pipit, whinchat and whitethroat occur in the open areas, some of which are interspersed with trees. Quail, corn bunting and warbler can be found in the transition to the field corridor. In addition, numerous butterflies, dragonflies, hymenoptera, dipterans and beetles as well as various mammals, including the brown shrew, water shrew, harvest mouse, pygmy shrew and hare are native to the nature reserve. The nature reserve is almost entirely surrounded by agricultural land. In the west, the nature reserve borders on Autobahn 9.