Over the last 10 years we have identified many new species of wildlife that were previously unrecorded at Hazel Hill Wood. These exciting finds include Barbastelle Bat, Firecrest (a tiny bird), Southern Marsh Orchid and Hazel Dormouse. The most recent is a Green Tiger Beetle – according to the Wildlife Trusts “The green tiger beetle is a common ground beetle of heathland, moorland, sandy grassland and sand dunes.”, so it was a surprise to find it in our woodland.
The most exciting find for me was discovering Great Crested Newts in our amazing wildlife pond in 2019. We already knew that we had Palmate Newts, which are frequently caught during pond dipping sessions. Great Crested Newts are much larger, and tend to live deeper in the pond, so aren’t caught on pond dipping sessions (not at Hazel Hill anyway). My friend Marcus had a Great Crested Newt licence, meaning he could carry out a bottle trap survey for us. Great Crested Newts are a protected species, and people need to be trained thoroughly to carry out this type of survey. See here for a Ray Mears video showing a Great Crested Newt survey.
At our 2019 BioBlitz, we put traps out around the pond late at night. Newts are naturally curious creatures, so they swim up to and into the plastic bottles, and get stuck inside. The survey is completed with high animal welfare standards, which means getting up early to check the traps. The species and sex are recorded, then each newt is released back into the pond. We knew it was possible that they were here, but it was still really special to take the first trap out of the pond and find a female Great Crested Newt! In the end, from 9 traps we found a total of 18 Great Crested Newts, plus some Palmate Newts!
Who knows if one day we’ll score a hat trick and find the third UK newt species – Smooth Newt (ironically the most common in the UK but not yet recorded at Hazel Hill!).
By Charley Miller, Conservation and Education Coordinator
