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Newt egg and baby...hope this works!

PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2007 7:38 pm
by dampflippers
Smooth newt tadpole- top view in plastic spoon approx 1 cm long
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Smooth newt egg well developed- you can see the curve of the body
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PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2007 7:49 pm
by whis4ey
Now tell me .. how did you spy that?
Great pics :)

PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2007 8:16 pm
by Ponddipperdave
Well Done Damps !

I half emptied my pond over the winter to look for a leak.
I got it fixed but lost most of my starwort so I don't know wher to look for
my newt eggs.

I have Hundreds of newts cavorting around so they must be egg laying somewhere. I have even tried out your suggestion of black bin liner cut into strips. How do you get the strips to sink?

once we get some sunnier weather, i'll have a good delve around.

Dave

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 10:47 am
by dampflippers
Tie it onto a stone so it sinks.

The egg was on forgetmenot. Most of the plants had been above water level, but I tied some of the young plants togeter with string and weighted them down so the leaves were just below the surface.
From watching them last year in an aquarium (I let them out after I had seen them laying) if there is noting they can fold them in, they will stick them on to any plant.
To me it looked as if they expell the egg, but it is sticky so it sticks to the body first. Then they use their back legs to try and wipe it off onto something. If it folds over it is all done neatly, if it doesn't fold it will just stick on eg to hornwort. I could clearly see little white eggs in jelly just attached to the surface of plants. Obviously these are less well hidden and more open to predation.

Dave, have you tried dipping a little jar in amongst the weed to see if you have any babies? I now get one in almost every dip.

By the way, I don't see my newts very often now, so I think the majority of laying is over.

I'll try to post pics of a folded leaf and a female (I am putting them on gallery at garden web to do this)

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 11:01 am
by dampflippers
Image

Image

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:49 pm
by whis4ey
Unfortunately in my pond I can never get close enough to distinguish between newt tadpoles and frog tadpoles :(

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 7:49 pm
by dampflippers
If they look like "tadpoles" they are frog or toad tadpoles.
If they look like a clumsy little fish with either gills, or gills and front legs or frontlegs and backlegs they are newt babies.

PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 10:33 pm
by alison
Brilliant pictures dampflippers. How wonderful to have so many newts in the pond. :D