Please help identify these newts

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Niall

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Hello!
Please can anyone help identify these newts? I'm in England and I have a large pond in my garden which was built about 5 years ago, for the last couple of years we've had a few Newts living in there but this year there are now approximately 30 or so Newts of varying shapes, sizes and colours!
Its hard to spot many in good light as they hide beneath the plants and greenery!

Here are a couple of pictures, sorry these are the best I could get, I'll try for some better ones another time:

newt2ok5.jpg


newt1vl2.jpg
 
I suck at ID's when it comes to salamandridae, but I would guess Lissotriton, fairly sure the first pic is Vulgaris. Second could be Helveticus?
 
Both palmate and smooth newts look superficially similar. When the males are in breeding dress, as they are now (the males are the more colourful, heavily marked newts with crested tails shown in your first photo) the easiest way to tell them apart it to look for a thin tail filament at the tail end. Ones with filament are palmate newts (Lissotriton helveticus) and males without are smooth newts (Lissotrition vulgaris).

Photo of male palmate newt - note tail filament

Photo of male smooth newt - no tail filament
 
Thanks for the identification guys, nice to know what they actually are!
 
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