News on Newts

Meerabai Kings

Consultant Ecologist

Spring has sprung here in the South Downs, the blossom is blooming, the birds are building nests, and the newts have emerged!

With spring comes the start of the newt surveys for our ecologists, who had their first newt survey of 2025 last week.

We have three native species of newt in the UK, the smooth newt, the palmate newt and the great crested newt. The great crested newt is protected by law here in the UK, and our team is very lucky this year to have a monitoring project for great crested newts in Surrey.

Our ecologists love getting stuck in with surveys, which often means getting wet and muddy, and last week was no different! Armed with wellies and waterproof trousers, the team set out bottle traps into the monitoring ponds. These bottle traps allow us to safely catch newts living in ponds so that we may monitor the local population.  

The bottles are set up at dusk and collected at dawn, so the newts are inside for as little time as possible, and before it gets too hot. They are nocturnal animals, so we leave the bottles overnight.  

So, how many glorious great crested newts did we see this time?  

Zero. 

But don’t be disheartened! It is still early in the season, and there’s still plenty of time for the great crested newts to start breeding and mingling with each other. The team have five more monitoring surveys to go and we are hopeful that we will find a great crested newt. Our hope is we can confirm a breeding population of great crested newts.  

While we didn’t find and lovely great crested newts, we did find many, equally beautiful, smooth and palmate newts.  

 We found 10 smooth newts, seven males with polka dot bodies, orange tummies and bumpy crests, and 3 females, who lack the crest. 3 male palmate newts, the smallest of our newts, also made an appearance. Male palmate newts are easily identified in the breeding season by black webs on their hind feet, and a thin, barb-like filament at the end of their tail. Its thought these help them stand out in courtship displays, grabbing the attention of nearby females. 

Keep an eye on our Journal to see if we are lucky enough to record a great crested newt at our monitoring site this spring, our fingers are crossed!

All surveys, handling and photos were undertaken under licence.