frogs and newts

The_herpetologist

I've created a pond in my garden and within 3 weeks of completing it, a from moved in (not to the pond itself, but into the compost heap I established next to the pond). Today, six weeks later, I noticed a newt in my pond. My question is; does anyone have an established pond in which frogs and newts are collocated and coexist? I have heard that newts tend to eat frogspawn.

nutcutlet

My newts overpowered the frogs

Then the heron overpowered the newts

I await the next development

The_herpetologist

Wow, you've got a heron! I'd surely sacrifice both my frogs and newts for a heron. Have you got a pic?

nutcutlet

No pic, it disappears as soon as it sees us. It hasn't visited for a week or 2, I think it's eaten everything big enough to make a meal.

I'd rather have my newts back

This is fenland, herons are common birds here. I love to watch them but they've gone too far this time

The_herpetologist

Yeah, they're a bit more exotic to West Yorks...herons that is. 

I've heard that in large ponds newts and frogs can coexist, but wondered whether this was something to do with scale (ie in big ponds newts can never manage to eat all of the frogspawn). My pond is relatively small and I'll be lucky if I get one breeding pair of frogs, so a few newts would surely render them vulnerable...although I understand that frogs do lay up to 3000 spawn at a time. Tempted to take out any spawn I see to protect it...or is that interfering with nature?

nutcutlet

I just accept what happens. 

I'm not pleased re the newts, we had common, palmate and great crested in there. 

tbh I doubt if they've all gone, the pond is too big and wild for none to have escped but there were only a few palmate (rescue newts) and they may be lost. The common and great crested are naturally occurring and I expect the population to recover

The_herpetologist

You've got Great Crested! No wonder you were pissed at the heron. It's clearly a winged vandal with no respect for our indigenous endangered species. A cultured heron would have picked out the smooth newts and left the palmates and great crested alone. 

nutcutlet

A photo for the hopeful herpetologist

 

Dovefromabove

When we lived at The Mill we had loads of Gt Cresteds and we loved watching their mating display in the ponds in the spring - but every year some of them would try to spend the winter under our doormats where they were squashed by our size 7s and 9s   No wonder they're endangered, they've not got a lot of common sense

Doogie72

We moved into our house last year and have a fairly large pond.  We recently did a night-time safari with the kids and we found frogs, toads and newts (smooth ones) so they must all happily co-exist in our garden.

The_herpetologist

beautiful