Rough-skinned newts are one of my favorite creatures.
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Newt’s Eye View
I had tried for a long time to get a picture like this but was never very happy with the results. The depth of field is pretty shallow here, I took some pictures with more depth of field but I didn’t like how busy the background became. I love this viewpoint, though, as it seems to highlight the dinosaur-like aspect of the newt.
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Frosted Newts
The grains of sand on this newt make it look like it has been frosted with sugar. Predators with a sweet tooth, however, should be cautious as some roughskins are highly toxic if ingested.
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Although rough-skinned newts are one of my favorite creatures, I had never been really happy with a lot of my photographs of them that I had taken over the years. Then one cool, wet day early in 2002 I found this one on a trail at Finley National Wildlife Refuge. With it sitting on the bright green moss and not moving much due to the cold weather, I spent about 45 minutes laying on the ground taking pictures. I rested my camera on one of my gloves that I layed on the wet moss. After a while I got chilled enough from the wet ground that it got hard to hold the camera steady, but I was thrilled with the chance to study this newt for so long. |
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From this top-down view of the newt’s head, you can get a pretty clear idea of where the “rough-skinned” part of their name comes from. |
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Rough-skinned newts have four fingers on their front feet and five toes on their rear feet. This is a shot of a rear foot, with its tail sweeping out-of-focus across the background. |
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With this shot, I wanted to show how the newt’s coloring makes them blend into the leaves of the forest floor, which is why I keep an eye out while hiking to avoid stepping on them. While I do most of my wildlife photography with my big cameras, this picture was taken with a point-and-shoot digital camera. |