After the ice
16th January 2010, SaturdayNew year’s resolution thwarted. I slipped on the ice, banged my head, and have had five days of debilitating headaches, so the idea of a trip in the car to look for dead newts in the recently defrosted ponds at Dungeness has been abandoned. Thanks though to Dave Bunney. He reported live smooth newts and some rather torpid marsh frogs in his pond at Dungeness on Thursday evening. Thursday evening! It took until today (Saturday) for the ice to melt on my pond in Northiam, and this simple climatic observation just shows how much milder the climate is down on the coast.
The melting of our pond revealed no corpses, rather three live smooth newts and a male palmate newt, so the thought that unusually severe ice might impact on early breeding adult newts can perhaps be dismissed, although if any readers have ponds in their garden they are able to access with a torch I would be interested to hear of any unusual dead newts in the water over this weekend.