As you may have noticed, I put the alpine newt at the top of my European most wanted list in Jeroen's winter thread. Why? Well, apart from the fact that they're really quite gorgeous, they were also the final native Danish species I had yet to see. Abundant further south, they are rare and localized in Denmark, where they were not even discovered until 1948.
If you look at a detailed range map you will find that populations are few, small and far between as you enter northern Germany. They only just reach across the border into Denmark in the southeast corner of Jutland where there are two small dots on the aforementioned map - one just a km or two north of the border and the other some 15 km further north, the northernmost population in the world and the area I was targeting. The Danish climate should really be quite suitable for the species and there is plenty of appropriate habitat elsewhere in the country but as they, at least at this latitude, are confined to deciduous forests and their immediate surroundings the sea, urban sprawl and wide reaches of cultivated fields present an impenetrable barrier preventing their spread further north. Thankfully a concerted effort to preserve the newts has proven succesful and after decades of decline following their initial discovery, digging of new ponds and cleaning of existing ones has brought the population to a stable and healthy level within the species' small Danish range. Continued attention is necessary however, to prevent numbers from falling once again to a critical level.
For years I have wanted to find this species in Denmark, yet I have never made the trip across the country to actually look for one - strange how some of us will sometimes spend fortunes to travel across the world looking for exotic species yet won't put in a few hours of driving and dish out a little for gas and bridge tolls to get to know our local species
Anyway, now was the time. Easter gave me the time on hand and visiting my parents for a few days got me couple of hours closer to my destination. Initially I had planned to go on Saturday but owing to a truely miserable weather forecast I went Thursday instead leaving my wife and kids at my parents' place and driving off after a quick lunch just an hour after arriving. Holiday traffic proved a pain and I arrived at my destination an hour later than anticipated. Due to my late arrival I went into an absolute twitching frenzy, not something I am usually prone to, and thus I have no pictures of habitats or bycatches. I was rather optimistic upon arrival but my endeavour would soon prove more difficult than I had anticpated. I had 8 ponds on my list to check and found few more on my own while checking out the surroundings. My results, omitting the various bugs, mammals and birds also seen were as follows:
Pond #1: The one for which I had held the highest hopes, but results were quite disappointing, 1 dead, unidentifiable anuran, decomposed to the point of mostly just being a foul smelling thick liquid
Pond #2: Nothing
Pond #3: Nothing
Pond #4: Nothing
Pond #5: By now increasingly pessimistic I really needed a moral boost and thankfully I got it. Though not in the form of my quarry, I did at least find 4 smooth newts, a pair of amplexed common toads and a few strings of toad spawn.
Pond #6: There is life in these ponds after all - lots of grass frog spawn and one smooth newt.
Pond #7: Plenty of smooth newts
Pond #8: Again, smooth newts galore, the first great crested newt and a dead grass frog
Pond #9: 2 smooth newts
Pond #10 More smoothies and the second great crested
The refound optimism I had gained as I began to at least find some live amphibians was by now waning again as I had still seen no sign of my precious. I had only one pond left on my list and it was getting late so I wasn't too confident I would have the time to find any new ponds on my own. It seemed it was now or never
Seeing the pond did little for my confidence. While not too bad it looked I thought less promising than many of the others. After having made my way more than half way around the pond, not large, yet larger than most in the area, I had found three smooth newts and I was beginning to resign myself to my fate when suddenly in my net was... one smooth newt, one great crested newt and - could it be?
Yes
The beautiful lady was of course as it behooves such a find subjected to a - by my standards - rather lengthy photo session. She was, however, extremely uncooperative, and as I was ill prepared, having not brought clean water, and completely unexperienced in the art of photographing in an aquarium I ended up releasing her back to her watery home with nothing but the poorest of documentation shots to show for my efforts - oh well.
While one alpine newt was somewhat less than I had allowed myself to expect from my trip I was still thrilled - the effort it took putting in hours of gaiting through brambles and across barbed wire fences, alternating with sifting through cold muddy waters only making the find all the sweeter.
After my photo session I searched through the rest of the pond and found two more smooth newts and one more great crested, its tail bitten partially off. Still high from my find I couldn't find the calm to head back home just yet and walked around a bit surveying the surroundings. I found one final pond. In it I found nothing but by now, that was OK
