Nothing to do with boats

[Daydream believer]

Like the title says this has nothing to do with boats, but I suspect that like many on this forum the garden is about all there is to play with. This year our gardens will be the best they have been for years.
Now, we have a very small pond about 4 ft * 14 ft . It was bigger, but my daughter tripped & fell face down in it in the dark once, when leaving for the sailing club laying up dinner dance. Naturally I got the blame so I filled in the bit outside the front door.
Today the wife decided that there was too much weed in it, so pulled out a massive lump. To our surprise she also pulled out about 6 NEWTS. There were also some very small young. Some, so small that we had a job to gather them up to put them back.
There are no ponds in any gardens in the vicinity so what I want to know is --How did they get there?
How does a newt get across a minimum of 300 yards to our pond & start breeding - quite successfully it would seem?
Has anyone encountered these in their ponds?

 

[jwilson]

Yes - pond inside a town garden with high stone walls all round. On emptying it to fill it in found newts and frogs, and a couple of muddy fish lurking in the bottom. What I could catch went in tub to edge of local lake.

 

[Jamie Dundee]

Eggs/spawn can be carried on the legs of water birds. Not unusual.

 

[RichardS]

Is there a problem with The Lounge? It was created for exactly this purpose.

I can hear the thin end of a flood gate bolting.

Richard

 

[bdh198]

Is there a problem with The Lounge? It was created for exactly this purpose.

I can hear the thin end of a flood gate bolting.

Like the title says this has nothing to do with boats, but I suspect that like many on this forum the garden is about all there is to play with. This year our gardens will be the best they have been for years.
Now, we have a very small pond about 4 ft * 14 ft . It was bigger, but my daughter tripped & fell face down in it in the dark once, when leaving for the sailing club laying up dinner dance. Naturally I got the blame so I filled in the bit outside the front door.
Today the wife decided that there was too much weed in it, so pulled out a massive lump. To our surprise she also pulled out about 6 NEWTS. There were also some very small young. Some, so small that we had a job to gather them up to put them back.
There are no ponds in any gardens in the vicinity so what I want to know is --How did they get there?
How does a newt get across a minimum of 300 yards to our pond & start breeding - quite successfully it would seem?
Has anyone encountered these in their ponds?

Outside of The Lounge, this could be a good place to raise the question: Recent discussions

 

[Hacker]

Leave the weed by the side of the pond for a week. This will allow any hidden critters to escape back into eh pond.

 

[PilotWolf]

Probably back in the 70s but Dads work had a pond. It was probably 2-3 hundred yards from the river with a road in between but full of eels. Staff said they had seen them crossing the road at night from the river.

Seem to remember as a kid fishing in the same river all we caught was eels.

W.

 

[Daydream believer]

Is there a problem with The Lounge? It was created for exactly this purpose.

I can hear the thin end of a flood gate bolting.

Richard

Yes! of course you are right. My mistake entirely. Please accept my apologies
I tend not to use the lounge. My experience of such a place would be that the newts represent immigrants and one should grant them full residential status in spite of the fact that the garden may already be overrun by slow worms & lizards. Then of course it would be declared that the subject matter had nothing to do with the aquatic nature of my pond but was more one of climate change. It would then revert to insults about my daughter falling in the pond, saying that she deserved to drown for voting/ not voting Brexit.
I feel safer here, where the insults are far more gentlemanly & made with genuine "feeling."

 

[Daydream believer]

Outside of The Lounge, this could be a good place to raise the question: Recent discussions

Thanks for the link. It seems that newts in the pond are very common.
I always thought them to be rare & a protected species. I am sure that a motorway or major road project somewhere was seriously delayed due to the presence of newts in a pond somewhere.

 

[Laminar Flow]

Is there a problem with The Lounge? It was created for exactly this purpose.

I can hear the thin end of a flood gate bolting.

Richard

If the pond is large enough to float a boat in it would be legit. 14x4 - a small kayak perhaps?

 

[LONG_KEELER]

Is there a problem with The Lounge? It was created for exactly this purpose.

I can hear the thin end of a flood gate bolting.

Richard

Self appointed forum police. Unkind and unnecessary at this difficult time for us all.

 

[oldmanofthehills]

Thanks for the link. It seems that newts in the pond are very common.
I always thought them to be rare & a protected species. I am sure that a motorway or major road project somewhere was seriously delayed due to the presence of newts in a pond somewhere.

Great Crested Newts are particularly rare and protected, Common Newts less so, but still much rarer than frogs. Frogs hunt on land and hibernate underwater and are common. Newts feed underwater on frog tadpoles etc and may hibernate in logpiles etc. Both can travel large distances on land though I was sorry for frog I found looking at my front door wondering how to jump over the house to get to our pond

 

[RichardS]

Self appointed forum police. Unkind and unnecessary at this difficult time for us all.

Oooooops.

Deleted

Richard

 

[RJJ]

Where's blasted Fink-Nottle when you need him?

 

[CAPTAIN FANTASTIC]

We have a small elevated pont and its full with all kinds of life including freshwater shrimps. But the strangest thing was when we found a stickleback in the tray of a flower pot, swimming around. All creature love water including us, lets hope that we get back in it, sailing, soon.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Where's blasted Fink-Nottle when you need him?

Self-isolating in Market Snodsbury.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Is there a problem with The Lounge? It was created for exactly this purpose.

As a freshwater sailor - sometimes - I am always interested to read about the wildlife I my encounter in my boat, so this is on-topic for me. Also, newts are native to the UK and would therefore stir no passions in the Lounge.

 

[Hydrozoan]

Great Crested Newts are particularly rare and protected, Common Newts less so, but still much rarer than frogs. Frogs hunt on land and hibernate underwater and are common. Newts feed underwater on frog tadpoles etc and may hibernate in logpiles etc. Both can travel large distances on land though I was sorry for frog I found looking at my front door wondering how to jump over the house to get to our pond

In the UK, there are also Palmate newts - see e.g. Palmate newt which says, perhaps relevantly to this thread: 'Palmate newts seem able to withstand dryer conditions than the smooth newt and are often found further from water during their terrestrial phase.'