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[which_chick]

My summers end with reddish-orange things -- ripe tomatoes, meadowhawk dragonflies, and newts, if the weather cooperates. It's possible, depending on where you live, that your summers may end without newts... and that's a damn shame. Anyway, since it was cool today, damp and foggy with intermittant rain, it was perfect newt weather and so I have newts for the end of my summer. I took pictures for you.

Comments

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I've ever actually seen a newt before. Very cool! Thanks for posting the pictures!

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

This is the terrestrial juvenile form of Notophthalmus viridescens, the red eft. As newts go, these are a common one, lots easier to see than spotted salamanders (whose eggs, long-time readers will recall, we get to see in huge slimy clumps that sit kind of spookily on the bottoms of vernal pools in early pre-leaf springtime). Misty, overcast days in late summer and early fall are top-notch weather for newts. For best results, look in reasonably unmolested woodlands near a year-round source of water. (Since that accurately describes the land not twenty feet from my front door, it is easy for me to find newts. On the other hand, if I wanted to find Indian takeout, I'd be looking quite a while.)

The grownup (green and yellow, with the same red spots they had as juveniles) newts are in the water, usually near the edges. They float up and bask, only to wiggle down and hide in the leaves at the bottom when you walk by. Determined children can catch them with bare hands, as I spent many a summer afternoon proving.

We have (as you have probably guessed from the pictures) lots of these at my house. They're easy to catch and don't bite, so if you stopped by at some point, I would be happy to catch you a newt to look at up close if you wanted.