Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Happy birthday last Friday to Connie, who enthusiastically organised a memorable newt survey of our garden pond last summer.
The final count of smooth newts was 22, of which only 5 were female, so in this sample less than a quarter of the population is female. This is despite the fact that on the occasions that I’ve seen a newt caught by a blackbird at the pond I’ve often spotted the bright orange belly of the male.
My thanks to Connie, Sofia and Annabelle for doing a bit of pond dipping in our back garden yesterday. They reported a single large water beetle and the odd damselfly larva but they made no mention of tadpoles or young frogs. That might be because of the numbers of newts in the pond.
Smooth Newts 22, of which only 5 were female, so in this sample less than a quarter of the population is female. On the occasions that I’ve seen a newt caught by a blackbird I’ve often spotted the bright orange belly of the male.
Cleaning the greenhouse involves removing cushions of moss which have grown along the edges of the panes. Under the staging newts play dead when we remove the bags we’d stowed down there in the dampest corner.
A carrion crow is an unusual visitor to the garden. A pair seem to be considering nesting at the edge of the wood and they’ve been engaged in a long-running dispute with the resident magpies.
We’ve got a moth mystery. Small 
moths (not the species I’ve illustrated, most of these have a little ‘snout’) keep appearing in the lounge. We’re wondering, since they seem to magically appear in the evening or first thing in the morning, if they’re finding their way in through some hole or crevice, for instance the hole where the telephone extension comes into the room. They seem to appear in that corner.
THERE’S ICE on the pond this morning which has largely melted away by lunch time. At sunset Barbara thinks that she’s spotted our first frog of the year. I focus the binoculars on it but can’t make up my mind whether it’s a frog or a dead leaf that has been blown into the pond.
When I go out to take a closer look it has disappeared. If it was a frog it could soon hide itself amongst the luxuriant pondweed but I’m pleased to see two or three smooth newts.
The pond has never looked better. We replaced the liner last year and I added plenty of oxygenating pondweed which has successfully established itself in the deepest section. It’s hard to believe that a year ago this was nothing more than a hole in the ground.
All we need now is those refugee frogs from next door to find their way here.
I go out later with a torch which isn’t powerful enough to enable me to see deep into the pond but I do spot a single newt in the shallow section.
THE END of summer; I think that the time’s right for cutting back the small meadow area at the end of the garden. There are a few scarlet poppies but most of the flowers are over now and should have set seed.
As I empty the trimmings on the compost heap, a Robin comes so close to me that I could reach out and touch it. There are two of them, equally tame, one hopping around where I’ve mown, the other near the shed. For the moment they seem to be sharing the garden in peace.
But inevitably cutting back this grassroot jungle has left one or two creatures homeless.
I try to mow the grass in sequence of swathes that will allow frogs and toads to gradually retreat towards the hedge as I progress. I get a brief glimpse of something hopping away near the log pile but I’m afraid that a couple of large slugs aren’t so lucky. I know they’re a traditional gardener’s ‘enemy’ but I’d have rescued them if I’d spotted them first.
I can see what appear to be vole runs in the turf and I notice two tiny newts, wriggling through the debris looking for cover in crevices in the damp earth. I manage to carefully rescue one and release it under the cover of the hedge, near next door’s pond.
Hope the Robin doesn’t spot it as it hops around under the hedge.
IT’S OFTEN NOT recommended to transport frogspawn from one pond to another because of the danger of spreading infection but I feel that I’m safe accepting a couple of clumps from a neighbour across the road whose pond always gets more frogspawn in it than it can accommodate. 
Our new pond has plenty of room, although the tadpoles, now hatched but still no more than short black dashes resting on the mass of jelly, are going to be at risk of being gobbled by the Smooth Newts that are already settling in to the new pond.
The tap water has had a week now to lose the small traces of chlorine that it contained so I was keen to add some oxygenating pond weeds. My neighbour saved me the trouble and expense of a trip to the garden centre by letting me have half a bucket of strands from his pond. Now the newts have some vegetation that they can lay their eggs on.