Good morning Readers! We were in the garden this morning, planting yet more plants for the bees and trying to keep on top of the duckweed, when my husband yelled out that he’d found a lizard. Well, not quite, but just as much fun – this is a smooth newt, a female, and she was very keen on getting back into the pond but came a bit of a cropper with the frogspawn. You can hear a very enthusiastic starling in the background too…

As you might expect, we had to rescue her, and soon she was swimming away, and not alone – we spotted at least one more newt, and I think there could be at least three. And the starling is still chattering away in the background.

I haven’t seen a newt in the pond since the very first year that we we built it, and I’m always a bit puzzled as to how they arrive, what with their teeny tiny legs. However, I think that they probably arrived as eggs on my pondweed – the female lays up to 300 eggs and wraps each one individually in a leaf. The males apparently do a very elaborate courtship dance, but no sign of any males yet. This might possibly be just as well, as newts and their tadpoles prey on frog tadpoles and can be very efficient – I’ve heard of ponds losing all their frogs once the newts are established. Anyhow, let’s see what happens. For the moment, I am delighted to see these little water dragons, and will put back some of the weed we’ve just taken out in case of any eggs.

The frog tadpoles are just starting to escape from the spawn, and it looks like a bumper year – you can just make out the tiny newly-hatched taddies as a mass in the middle of the photo.