Newt eggs folded into the water forget-me-not

23 May 2026 · 3 min read

The newts were a surprise. I had hoped for frogs when I dug the pond and they came the first spring. Newts I had assumed needed an older pond, or a nearby population I did not know about. On the evening of the 11th of April, shining a torch across the surface from the kitchen step, I saw two slim shapes hanging in the water with their legs out, and then one of them rose, took a bubble of air and sank again. Smooth newts, I think, from the size and the spotted throat I saw on one in a jar for thirty seconds the next day before it went back in.

By May there were at least six, counted on a still evening when I could see most of the pond at once, with two males displaying in the shallows over the pebbles, tails crooked and quivering. The females were in the plants. A female newt lays her eggs one at a time, each one wrapped in a leaf that she folds over with her back feet, and the water forget-me-not that I planted on the shelf in 2024 turned out to be exactly what they wanted.

On the 20th of May I lifted a trailing stem of forget-me-not gently out of the water, without detaching it, and counted the folded leaves. Thirty-one on that one plant, each leaf creased in half and stuck shut, with a pale grey-white egg about 2 millimetres across visible inside when I held the stem up to the light. Some had already hatched and were open with nothing in them. A few of the eggs were further on, with a dark comma shape inside. I put the stem back exactly where it had been and did not touch any others.

Three rules I have set myself with the newts. No nets in the pond between March and July. No lifting plants more than once a season to count. And no handling at all, which I broke once with the jar and will not again, because the one I looked at was clearly stressed and newts are protected in any case. The torch from the step is enough: on a mild night I can watch them hunting among the oxygenating weed for an hour, and the only thing I disturb is my own bedtime.