I am soooooo jealous! Congratulations! I keep inspecting my water starwort, but no luck yet!

Congratulations on the 'newt' arrivals! I have read that water starwort is good for them, and with your recommendations about how good it is-- I keep hoping for the swish of little flippers. None that I can see....yet!

Any chance of photos?

Okay, Here goes.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful:

How brilliant Dave. What else is in the bucket? They look like leeches. How big is the baby newt?
Alison

Ahhh--it's cute!! You must be very proud.

You should be proud of yourself too for sorting out the pictures too. Thanks Kazzie for all your advice, and when the work slows down a bit I will give it a go.

The Newt babies are smaller than a quarter of an inch.
(I don't do decs)
Those others are flatworms or Planaria.
They themselves are very small. You usually find them
as black blobs on plants and they skim slowly on the underside of the water surface in the evenings.
Dave

Congratulations ponddipperdave.

I would love to see newts in my pond again. I caught a glimpse of one last year, but never again since then. It is facinating that newts have the same life cycle as frogs, you were so lucky to find a baby.

If you have any more pictures later in the summer would love to see how they develop.
Mark

Excellent, check your email.

They are coming thick and fast now.
This was one dip with the container.
Also in the pic you can see a WATER HOG LOUSE
and several Daphnia.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Never heard of the water hog louse--great name! It also looks like you got the hang of the pictures, the lily's are lovely.

were can i get some of the weed

Lucky you, I have toads but no newts, post me a couple LOL
Bill

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

Newts can do fine in the garden without water, I often find them under bricks and things but they cant get in our pond as it's raised up. I guess they do a lot of walking at night and probably go to another pond to spawn. When I have picked them up round the belly they do go kind of rigid (guess it depends how hard your squeeze is). I wouldn't worry too much about it, they know what they're doing.

If they are anything like frogs they can go rigid when they are in shock and after a while of being left alone they will come out of it and act all normal again. I would leave him alone for a few hours and then see if he is okay. If he has gone then you know all is well. They like any damp area and it doesn't have to be in the pond. They don't live in the pond as much as frogs do.
Alison

Cnut, I'm all for making accommodation for newts - all it takes is a not-too-tidy garden. Piles of logs or stones are good; we have piled up all the fruit tree prunings along the fence at the bottom of our garden. It makes a good home for all sorts of wildlife, hedgehogs as well as newts, frogs, toads and lots of insects.