Wildlie Column with Prof Ian Rotherham

This specially protected species has been on a long-term decline across Britain and Europe probably for the last fifty years or so and now receives the highest level of nature conservation recognition. Since that single find I came across abundant crested newt larvae in my more ornamental pond; much bigger and darker than the common smooth newts. However, whilst I was rescuing newt larvae from amongst the oak-leaves gathered in the pond, my local robin kept nipping in to help itself to easy pickings. Too fast for me to react and several of my precious larvae were swallowed whole.

The robin stared at me with the clear expectation of more to come – so I fetched the dried meal worms to divert its attention! The crested newt larvae are much bigger and darker than those of the common or smooth newt, and by this time had pretty much lost their feathery gills and gained two pairs of legs. In overall appearance they were rather tadpole-like but more elongate and dark blackish in colour. I since looked by torchlight during the spring and early summer to search in vain for a glimpse of an adult in the water. But I had no luck and indeed last year I couldn’t find any sign of the larvae either. I had lots of smooth newts but no crested.

Well, you can imagine my surprise this February when lifting out oak-leaves from the top (wildlife) pond, when out of the leaves and pondweed in the bottom of the net, came an immature great crested newt – how exciting was that! This was even more surprising since it was after a couple of nights with quite heavy frosts and after all, I was only skimming the pond surface rather than dipping deep into the water. The newt must have been at the surface or else very close to it. I will be watching carefully this spring.