SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (California) 04 March 06 Why newts are neat creatures to naturalists - Winter migration after rainfall leads to frenzied mating in ponds (Jerry George)
I don't know whether I should admit this publicly: I was raised in Southern California. The animals that I chased as a kid were snakes and bats.
But when I returned north (I was born in Santa Rosa) to the land of fog, rain and tall trees, my interests shifted to salamanders and frogs. As a graduate student in a biology department filled with old-school naturalists/ecologists, I had to find an animal that I could observe so I could sort out what made it do whatever it did.
Some people studied bird songs and how their chirps were territorial declarations of "don't tread on me," "back away from that berry," "say, sweetness, what's your sign?" or "you better keep your flashy feathers away from my Millicent or I'll, I'll ... well I'll sing at you. That's what I'll do." But bickering birds didn't appeal to me.
I remembered a field trip to a pond. They called it a lake, but it wasn't. It was more bog than even pond, tucked in a narrow canyon on the west side of Mount Tamalpais where the oaks from the mountain's east side give way to old-growth redwoods. The pond was filled with 8-inch orange-brown salamanders. To someone used to salamanders somewhere between telephone wire and a pencil in thickness with legs no more than an afterthought, the ones I saw in the pond looked huge and easy to study.
California newts: wet-soil brown on the top and bright lifejacket-orange underneath. When the December rains come, you can find them by the dozens crossing roads through redwood forests. Unfortunately, they are slow, deliberate critters and they get squished on the busier roads. They breed in ponds but live on land, so each year they migrate. The first real winter rains, usually in December, are their signal to head for the water and some frenzied breeding.
Frenzied is the right word. Newt numbers are worse than human numbers in Alaska. Males outnumber females by a whopping percentage, and the results aren't pretty. At the height of mating you often see balls of writhing male newts in the water intertwined and struggling to get to the center of the ball. There may or may not be a lone female in their midst. At least some of those lads never saw a female before launching into the lusting scrum.
The newt balls can stay together for a few days, but newt mating activity continues for several months from whenever the rains start in December through February. At any time during that period, if you visit a coastal redwood forest and find yourself beside a pond or a quiet pool in a stream, stand still and watch the bottom. Soon you'll see one of the supposed sticks swim off. They look like tiny alligators sculling along with their flattened tails and their legs hanging down at their sides.
Newts are not shy. They don't need to be. Newt skin secretes a toxin that makes whoever chances to eat one immediately spit it out. They have no major predators. But I've noticed that they do tend to freeze when you first approach a pond. Be patient. They're in there.
The eggs overwinter in gelatinous globs like frog eggs, then hatch in the spring as the pond's water warms. Young newts look just like frog pollywogs, but they quickly elongate and look like the adult newts -- with one exception. They have masses growing out of the sides of their head that look like dense tree roots. They're external gills for breathing. If you see gills on a pollywog, you know it is a salamander and not a frog. Adult newts "breathe" through their skin, but the growing youngsters apparently need more oxygen and get it through their gills.
As the young newts reach adult size, these external gills disappear. At the same time, the swimming tails of the breeding adults begin to thin and shorten, and their skin becomes knobby as if they'd been breaded with grains of sand in preparation for their summer life on land.
Most of their land life is spent under logs, in rocky cracks or some other place moister than open ground, but during a spring rain or a foggy day, it's not unusual to see an individual newt wandering with a crocodile-like gait in search of bugs or worms or tiny snails.
A word of caution: Strange as it may seem, newts have a primitively charming way about them. If you bundle up and go out to see them once, you're likely to go again.
Why newts are neat