GCNs

In a short break in the rain I heard my first cuckoo of the year. Fortunately the rain eased off in the evening as we had arranged to help the ranger survey the main pond for Great Crested Newts (GCNs). While it was still light we searched for eggs and found lots of palmate/smooth newt eggs and 20+ GCNs. In the dark we did a torch survey of the water - there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of palmate newts but we didn't see any GCNs. Last year we had eight. We'll have another look in a few weeks. We also netted quite a few damselfly and dragonfly nymphs.