Smooth newt has laid an egg in this folded submerged water forgetmenot leaf. Image link:

Aahhh, We have little palmate newts I have decided, and they have started making their presence known. As the taddies are hatching we will be having some very very fat palmate newts! There are Great Crested Newts about a mile away, so I keep hoping! If you crossed your male frogs and newts, would you get frewts? It is too late in the evening... Chip

I still don't have a digital camera! Don't ask! Aren't you lucky being able to see everything. I have so much greenery these days. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens to my 'egg.' Unfortunately I was really late doing the barley straw earlier this year and the blanket weed's been spreading because of the sun. I have to be really careful while I'm using my twizzle stick (actually a plastic rod from a blind, which is ideal) not to pull anything out. If ever I proved to myself that barley straw works, it was this year. My pond water is also really clear and I don't have a pump or a filter in sight! I put it down to the barley straw because I don't know what else it could be.

I'm hoping someone here with experience of newts can give me their opinion. My husband and I were moving a stack of bricks in our garden when we found a little newt. He seemed rigid at first, and our fear was that he was dead or badly injured. My husband picked him up to move him, and the tip of his tail began lashing furiously, but the rest of his body remained rigid. We left him in a shaded spot on the other side of the garden. Is this "freezing" and tail-lashing a defensive posture, or is it likely he was injured to the extent that his tail was all he could move? (We still feel quite awful about disturbing him: we'll feel even worse if we paralysed the little fellow.) Another question concerns the utter lack of water in our garden: why was he there, and where will he go to spawn? Should we make accommodation for him and any others that might be in the garden? Many thanks