Often when I do a survey it feels like I'm just ticking a box and I don't see very much, but today I actually felt like I achieved something. A job which I worked on a lot last year has come to an end and they're just clearing up, but there was a temporary flood alongside a pond which had previously been identified as a potential Great Crested Newt pond following DNA sampling of the water.
Today they needed to pump out the water and fill in the flood, and I was required to transfer any newts that we found into the pond. Before I got there I had absolutely no confidence that we would find newts, but amazingly I managed to rescue 23 newts from the digger, including 6 great crested and 17 smooth newts. Five of the great crested were females with eggs.
Male great crested newts.
Smooth newt.
Who would have guessed that a flood such has this would have held 23 newts!
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