"Anthony Campbell" wrote in message
...
Until a couple of years ago our small pond in our north London garden
was regularly populated with common newts breeding in spring. For the
last two years there have been no newts. Does this reflect the
widespread loss of amphibians that has been reported? They are certainly
missed.
===============================
I'm from America, the mid South. We have LOADS of newts here. They spawn
in the ponds along with the frogs and toads in spring. I have read about the
loss of amphibians but it sure doesn't apply to some of us ponders in the
USA. :-)
--
RM....
Frugal ponding since 1995.
rec.ponder since late 1996.
My Pond & Aquarium Pages:
http://tinyurl.com/9do58
~~~~ }((((* ~~~ }{{{{(ö

Anthony Campbell wrote, On 16/03/2007 11:01:
Until a couple of years ago our small pond in our north London garden
was regularly populated with common newts breeding in spring. For the
last two years there have been no newts. Does this reflect the
widespread loss of amphibians that has been reported? They are certainly
missed.

I've never had newts, and for the last few years no tadpoles either. Our
pond is in North Essex, and neighbours get lots of wildlife.

We used to get frog spawn. Then one year the pump inlet was moved over
winter and when tadpoles hatched they got mashed. Now we get none.

I expect that the water movement is too fast so frogs and toads don't
bother spawning, but are happy to sit around the pond catching flies.
Either that, or they can smell death in our pond and know not to lay
there

Have you made any changes to your pond filtration or plant cover?

--
DavidM
www.djmorgan.org.uk

Good question.
Garden ponds have bee life savers for amphibians where natural
habitat has been altered for housing and commercial development.

Like all amphibians they are very sensitive to chemicals. I always
worry about neighbors spraying and fertilizing and applying chemicals
where our native frogs are concerned.

Your newts may have fallen prey to this. Or there may be several
industrious cats operating in the neighborhood. Or some hungry birds.

If you know of a pond where newts breed you can go harvest some eggs
or baby newtlings and adopt them. As always you must be careful to follow
local law when mucking around in natural ponds. Another safe bet is a
fellow garden pond keeper.

kathy :-)



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Anthony Campbell wrote:
Until a couple of years ago our small pond in our north London garden
was regularly populated with common newts breeding in spring. For the
last two years there have been no newts. Does this reflect the
widespread loss of amphibians that has been reported? They are certainly
missed.



I knew that there were concerns about the crested newt in the UK but
hadn't realised until you posted that this now applies to the common
newt as well. Did a bit of googling and discovered that, like the
crested, they are now a protected species:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfact...iles/479.shtml

I wonder if their further decline relates to the hot summers, cold
winters and lack of rainfall we have had over the last couple of years -
hopefully our recent mild winter and very wet weather this year will
mean that they will start to recover in numbers this year.

Gill

wrote:


If you know of a pond where newts breed you can go harvest some eggs
or baby newtlings and adopt them. As always you must be careful to follow
local law when mucking around in natural ponds. Another safe bet is a
fellow garden pond keeper.

kathy :-)

Newts are protected in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of
1981 - I believe the degree of protection varies - certainly it is
illegal to even disturb Crested Newts let alone move them or their
offspring into another environment. I'm not sure if this is the case
with the Common Newt but as it is rapidly declining my feeling would be
to leave well alone if they are breeding successfully somewhere....

The only thing that can really be done is to make the pond more
attractive to any passing newts, although from my research it looks as
if the environment most suited to newts does not exactly match the
environment suitable for fish keeping.

One thing that Anthony could try is contacting his local wildlife trust
who hopefully might be able to give him more information on the status
of newts in his area.

Gill

wrote:
My question is,

Where have all the flowers gone?
(long time passing.)

And please forgive my ignorance, but what is a newt?
The only newt I remember is in a movie a long time ago. (I think it
was Camelot, where Merlin or King Arthur called a young boy a newt.)
(Or, it could have been a completely different movie; my memory isn't
so good.)

ron

See here.,.........
http://www.rspb.org.uk/gardens/guide...commonnewt.asp

--
ßôyþëtë

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 06:37:22 CST, Anthony Campbell
wrote:

One or two may be dormant but most have just disappeared, including the
Elodea which always used to proliferate wildly. Checking the pH is a
good idea; I'll do that.

Don't pull them out too soon, they may come back. I know a lot of
arrowheads & Sagittarius are like that, slow to return. You also may have
some small but alive elodea in the pots. ~ jan
------------
Zone 7a, SE Washington State

In , on 03/16/07
at 02:47 PM, said:



My question is,

Where have all the flowers gone?
(long time passing.)

And please forgive my ignorance, but what is a newt?

Basically, a newt is an aquatic salamander (scientifically, it's more
complicted than that, I'm sure.)



Alan

--

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