Near my flat in Greater London there is a small forest with a couple of ponds in it. In the deeper one of the two all three species of newts (L.vulgaris, L.helveticus & T.cristatus) found in the UK could be seen (but strangely no R. temporaria). However, the pond’s surface is heavily covered by duckweed so the only way you could observe the newts is by net dipping. I don’t have the right equipment for this so I started visiting the pond at night to see if I can observe some of them on dry land. On one side of the pond is the park’s fence and a road, on the other side immediately next to the pond is a narrow dirt footpath and on the other side of the footpath there is heavy vegetation and trees. The only place where I could observe anything was on that footpath so that was the only place I looked at. Between 14 May and 12 June I went there every night (with the exception of one or two at the most) in different times of the night (but no later than midnight). The conditions were seemingly good most of the times but I only observed newts twice in that period. The first time it was 22:45h and I saw a male T.cristatus on the footpath. The newt was facing the pond but not moving. Only about a meter away from it there was a female L.helveticus lying parallel to the footpath and pond. This was only a brief encounter so I didn’t take any photos. There were some heavy rains at some point and there were puddles forming on the footpath. In the first couple of nights after the rains stopped I didn’t see any newts although it was fairly warm. Once the puddles dried out but there was still considerable amount of moisture I saw a newt again. It was at 22:00h and I saw again a male T.cristatus at almost exactly the same spot as the first time (+/- 50cm). This makes me think they have particular routs they follow when foraging on dry land. Interestingly when he was exposed to the light of my torch he didn’t flee to the water where he was seemingly going but back into the dense vegetation in the opposite direction where he was most likely foraging before I met him. On both occasions there was an abundance of invertebrates but this was not the main reason for the newt’s activity because there was plenty of invertebrates on other occasions but no newts.
Obviously my observations cover short period and a very small area so are not in any case conclusive but the conditions at which I found the newts on both occasions were very similar and were as follows:
Time: 22:00 – 22:45
Temperature: around 20 C
Moon phase: First quarter
Ground conditions: quite moist but NOT soaking wet
Does anybody know of any publications on the terrestrial activity during the aquatic stage of any European Triturus? I looked online but couldn’t find anything.
Here's a snapshot from a small video I did of the second one.