Baby newt

This little guy seems to be a Great Crested Newt eft. It's good to know that at least some have made it to this size.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

When a mummy newt and a daddy newt...

Baby newts are also known as 'efts'. I think this might be one of the offspring of our Great Cresteds, though it's not easy to tell.

Whichever species it is, you can see its gills and spindly legs starting to develop. These little fellows hatch out about a month after the eggs are laid, and in another three months' time, they'll be ready to leave the pond and spend the next couple of years as a land-lubber.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Newtology

The pond

Now the days are longer and the weather (slightly) better, I've been spending time by the pond again. For the past two or three weeks, 'our' Great Crested and Smooth Newts have returned.

The water's still clear, so it's possible to watch them with binoculars without disturbing them, which is great fun. The Smooth Newts are easier to see, favouring the shallower water, while the Great Cresteds lurk in the deep and only come up for air every 15 minutes.

I love watching them swim about. The Smooth Newts in particular seem to live in their own watery world, floating around with their little legs sticking out at right-angles.

Watching them 'hunting' is intriguing. Through binoculars, you can see them lining up a morsel of food - perhaps a mosquito larva. It wiggles, tantalisingly, in front of the newt's nose. The newt prepares to make its move... but often it seems that the larva is ahead of the game and makes off just before the newt prepares its explosive burst of speed.

I'm getting better at newt identification now. Telling male from female Smooth Newts is fairly straightforward - mature males have a jagged crest from head to tail, looking a bit like a mini Stegosaurus, or an aquatic crinkle-cut chip. The females are... Smooth, looking more like a lizard.

We seem to have some huge female Great Crested Newts in the pond, bulging with eggs. The males follow the females around and swim in front of her, sometimes even lashing them with their tails. Not very romantic.

So, now that I've turned into a newt nerd, I decided I needed to learn more about them. And that's why I went to Ramsey Heights yesterday for 'An Introduction to Great Crested Newts'. We weren't introduced personally to any newts, but I learned a lot. An afternoon in the classroom was followed up with practical newt surveying - shining torches into the pools where they live. You need a licence to do that, but it gave me a taster of something I'd like to find out more about...

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Gasp!

I had to wait about 10 minutes before our resident Smooth Newt came up for air. When it did, it was very quick and soon dived back down out of sight.

Well, it's true that I don't really know anything about newts (amongst many things). I did wait 10 minutes, the newt did come up for air and it did dive out of sight quickly. But, it was not just a Smooth Newt; it was an M&S Newt - a Great Crested Newt!

When Great Crested (or Warty) Newts are mentioned in the media at the moment, it's usually with the words '... bane of modern developers' or 'enemy of progress'. The reason is that they're protected under UK and European laws and you can't disturb them, possess them, trade them in any way or damage their habitat. Good!

The newt was first seen on 27 July. I saw it come up and air and go down again, and it didn't really cross my mind that it could have been anything other than a bog-standard Smooth Newt. On 3 August, I got the above photo of it and it did strike me that it looked quite dark and spotty, but a couple of friends told me it was Smooth and I had no reason to think otherwise.

Then, Matt left a comment on the original version of this post so I thought I'd get it checked out. Kevin and Daniel both told me it was Great Crested and I'm still astounded. Where has it come from? Did it hitch a ride on some pond plants? I don't know for sure, but apparently they've been seen elsewhere in our village and I wonder how many others are lurking out there.

I didn't see the newt yesterday so I wondered if it had left the water and gone looking for worms. This evening, when we got back from work, I went to have a look for it again. There it was, in the water soldier, but there was another one, too! It was fascinating to watch (what was presumably) the male newt stand on his forelegs and arch his back, showing his orange belly to the female.

So sorry, but you're likely to read more of my droning on about ponds and newts here in the future.

• 'If you are creating or managing a pond where Great Crested Newts are present, you may need a conservation licence' says the Pond Conservation website...

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D + EF 300mm f/4L IS USM