great crested newt by torchlight

[Gill Catton]

I just thought folks might be interested in what great crested newts can look like during a torchlight survey as they can look really quite different from their text book picures, especially later in the breeding season when the magnificant crest if the male begins to shrink.....



here is a male floating in the water column who might have taken the whole 'jazz hands' thing a little far!



These newts are actually in an old concrete water tank they seem to love it - there has to be hundreds of them in there but as the pond is entirely concrete there is no emergent or floating aquatic vegetation, recently, plastic pom-poms of plastic strips have been put into the tank to be used by the females as laying material, they are massively sucessful and this is what this male is sat on though quite why he chose this spot I don't know!!



This is a sub-adult newt, notice the spade shaped head characteristic of this species at all ages it seems to me!! Notice also the cloud of micro organisms in the water around it, this is a very healthy water tank



adult female - noticably brown in comparison to usual images of this species though the wartyness of the skin is still very evident...



Many of the newts were thinking about leaving the pond - though they have to climb up a concrete slope about a foot high and down the other side to the ground they seem to manage!!



Just to reassure, I am a licensed newt worker and these pictures were taken alongside a standard torchlight survey.

[demicav]

Good pictures. I haven't seen a Newt in a long time, not since I was a child in fact. Forgive my ignorance but why is the survey carried out by torchlight ?

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by demicav

Good pictures. I haven't seen a Newt in a long time, not since I was a child in fact. Forgive my ignorance but why is the survey carried out by torchlight ?

they seem to be more active and therefore are more easily seen at night and the torch illuminates them in the water really well. Its one of the methods that is used to estimate a population size (or in a presence /absence type survey)

[mh68]

Excellent pics Gill I`ve seen 2 newts in my life - one dried up dead specimen when I was a kid, and a couple of months ago a Smooth or Palmate eft which was in amongst a bucketful of beasties a mate got me for the garden pond.

Mark H

[djackso]

Wonderful - thank you VERY much for posting these shots - lovely creatures. I'm envious.

The plastic strip thing is very interesting.

[Tracey.A]

Hi Gill, I don't know much about newts, so I found this posting fascinating! I gleaned such a lot by reading what you'd written about the Great crested newts. I hope you keep on keeping us up to date. Do you have any other kind of newts? I would never have guessed that pom poms of plastic strips would have worked as laying material, but they obviously work extremely well. Really enjoyed this post, thanks Gill.

Tracey

[Gill Catton]

They're not 'my' newts they are actually on minsitry of defence land and that was sadly the last survey I did back in June......... and yes there were a few smooth newts too but by far and way there were sooooooooooo many great crested newts!

The plastic pom-poms' apparently actually seem to have significantly boosted the population since they were introduced a few years ago- one of those situations where one critical resource can have a massive impact on a population size.

[Ida]

Great pictures, Gill. I've been lucky enough to see Great Crested Newts before, but only ever in the breeding season - so it was interesesting to see them in 'plain clothes'.

PS If anyone's near Great Dixter (Christopher Lloyd's garden), Northiam, Kent in spring, it's worth a visit as they have Great Crested Newts breeding in the small, formal pond there.

[aeshna5]

Interesting set of photos Gill.

[vole-woman]

Those are really helpful, Gill. I'd have given those guys a quick glance and assumed they were big common newts. Is it just in the breeding season GCNs are dark and crested? And what months would that span?

Which plastic pom poms are you talking about?