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<u>VISALIA TIMES-DELTA </u>(California) 07 April 07 Few residents know about California newts (William Tweed)
Our portion of California provides habitat for lots of creatures that few human residents even know exist. One of my favorites is the California newt.
Imagine a small animal that vaguely resemble a fat lizard, now color him bright orange and give him a length of up to about six inches. Give this strange little creature the slow, deliberate gait of a turtle, and you're close to completing the picture. Oh yes, there's one more thing — newts both swim happily in deep pools of water and walk on the land!
Newts fall into the class of vertebrate animals known as amphibians, which means they live at various times both in water and away from it. Newts cannot survive hot, dry conditions, however, and this limitation has much to do with why most human residents seldom encounter them.
After years of looking, I've come to know when and where to look for newts. Their predictable habits make them easy to find.
I have a simple search pattern, which works nearly every year. I wait until late February or early March, then walk about a mile from my house in Three Rivers to a small rocky pool located along one of the numerous seasonal streams that grace our local foothills. Here, if I'm patient, I usually can see newts swimming a foot or two beneath the surface.
It took me a while to learn to see newts, even in this pool. Their bright orange color, which seems so obvious when the creatures are on dry land, hides them well in pools lined with old sycamore leaves and other vegetative debris.
The life cycle of the California newt reflects its need to remain moist and its knowledge of California's annual weather cycle. During the dry weather of summer and early fall, newts remain deeply buried in moist ground or under rotting logs or rocks. Only when the fall rains come do they return to the surface and become active.
During midwinter, often during rainstorms, they migrate to small streams and ponds, where they meet other newts to mate and lay eggs on submerged vegetation. They come back to the same places year after year, and once you've discovered a newt pool, you can usually count on finding the creatures there again the following winter.
Like frogs, to which they are closely related, newts go through a larval stage after their eggs hatch. In this "tadpole" stage they are at risk of predation. In dry years like this one, they also may see their natal streams dry up before they have had sufficient time to metamorphose into adults.
Last week I visited my newt pool again, and found the adult newts gone. My guess is that they took advantage of the rains late last month to move back to their individual summer ranges. I assume they are preparing now for the long dry season that will begin in the next few weeks.
We humans tend to describe as "simple" those small things that we don't understand. Newts look simple, but I'm not so sure the word really applies to them.
In their ability to endure our summers, these small "simple" creatures demonstrate highly developed survival mechanisms. They seem to know exactly what to do. I will confess to admiring the ability of newts to survive, but deny possessing any envy of their lifestyle. Spending half the year dozing beneath a rotting log sounds a little slow, even to me.
http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070407/LIFESTYLE/704070324
Our portion of California provides habitat for lots of creatures that few human residents even know exist. One of my favorites is the California newt.
Imagine a small animal that vaguely resemble a fat lizard, now color him bright orange and give him a length of up to about six inches. Give this strange little creature the slow, deliberate gait of a turtle, and you're close to completing the picture. Oh yes, there's one more thing — newts both swim happily in deep pools of water and walk on the land!
Newts fall into the class of vertebrate animals known as amphibians, which means they live at various times both in water and away from it. Newts cannot survive hot, dry conditions, however, and this limitation has much to do with why most human residents seldom encounter them.
After years of looking, I've come to know when and where to look for newts. Their predictable habits make them easy to find.
I have a simple search pattern, which works nearly every year. I wait until late February or early March, then walk about a mile from my house in Three Rivers to a small rocky pool located along one of the numerous seasonal streams that grace our local foothills. Here, if I'm patient, I usually can see newts swimming a foot or two beneath the surface.
It took me a while to learn to see newts, even in this pool. Their bright orange color, which seems so obvious when the creatures are on dry land, hides them well in pools lined with old sycamore leaves and other vegetative debris.
The life cycle of the California newt reflects its need to remain moist and its knowledge of California's annual weather cycle. During the dry weather of summer and early fall, newts remain deeply buried in moist ground or under rotting logs or rocks. Only when the fall rains come do they return to the surface and become active.
During midwinter, often during rainstorms, they migrate to small streams and ponds, where they meet other newts to mate and lay eggs on submerged vegetation. They come back to the same places year after year, and once you've discovered a newt pool, you can usually count on finding the creatures there again the following winter.
Like frogs, to which they are closely related, newts go through a larval stage after their eggs hatch. In this "tadpole" stage they are at risk of predation. In dry years like this one, they also may see their natal streams dry up before they have had sufficient time to metamorphose into adults.
Last week I visited my newt pool again, and found the adult newts gone. My guess is that they took advantage of the rains late last month to move back to their individual summer ranges. I assume they are preparing now for the long dry season that will begin in the next few weeks.
We humans tend to describe as "simple" those small things that we don't understand. Newts look simple, but I'm not so sure the word really applies to them.
In their ability to endure our summers, these small "simple" creatures demonstrate highly developed survival mechanisms. They seem to know exactly what to do. I will confess to admiring the ability of newts to survive, but deny possessing any envy of their lifestyle. Spending half the year dozing beneath a rotting log sounds a little slow, even to me.
http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070407/LIFESTYLE/704070324