RAUK - Archived Forum - Is this a crestie?

I am convinced, but does anyone wish to comment?  the pic doesnt do its yellow colour justice but take it from me it is brighter in real light.  The eye convinced me, and also that there are smoothie/palmate young in the same place and they are clearly different being darker brown and not so elongated at this one. 

Thanks Will. Yes Its pretty definite.  The next three pics confirm this, the colour is better but also in the last pic i have shown the crestie egg next to a palmate/smooth newt egg. This for me confirms things, as you can all see they are quite different in size and colour.

Those are excellent slides Matt thanks.  I did measure the eggs I found, came in at 5-6mm for the Cresties as compared to the 3-4mm of the 'other' species. Of course those measurments are at late development of the emryo so no doubt they would be a touch smaller when freshly laid. Seems the black and yellow appearance however is quite clearly different from the darker brown to light brown of the other newt young. 

Found these incidently by accident, stopped to chat to some kids pond dipping and they showed me thier haul (which was returned, I made sure of that).  I had heard there may be cresties around but had never seen the evidence and when I took the time to look harder I noticed hundreds of yellow dots on the plants in the shallows, seems a good crop of eggs had been laid. The kids gave me stories of 'accidental' transfer too, one of thier friends parents had borrowed some cuttings of the pond weeds and planted out his pond at home only to discover eggs wrapped in the leaves later.  But, apparently the newts thrived in the garden.  This got me to thinking about the law etc, there is nothing to stop accidental transfer by people who just arent informed like we are.  When I was a kid, we used to pond dip and take all sorts of creatures home and introduce them to our ponds. The home I grew up in has a great frog, toad and newt population in its garden now which were all introduced by the innocent me when I was 10 years old.  I guess its actually a 'natural' event in the true sense, humans moving fauna around for fun or farming.  My school even had some cresties in a tank which were taken from a local pond I believe.

Just think how many GCN are moved or introduced to garden ponds by unknowing children every year, just like those kids I bumped into last week.  Could it be argued that it actually helps the species in many cases??  I guess the law is more directed or rather enfirced at construction and larger scale removal of GCN habitat.