R
roger
Guest
This past Saturday my girlfriend and I drove out to Gilbert Lake State Park near Oneonta, New York for some newt spotting. We explored a number of breeding ponds in the park and were a bit surprised to find the resident n. viridescens to be much darker than the newts in our area(Gilbert Lake is only about 1 hour southwest of us). The newts we examined were such a dark green that they were almost black! You could hardly make out any red spots. Our local newts are much lighter in general and have more variety in color. My own males are light olive green and my females are closer to an olive tan. All have prominent red spots. When I finally buy a camera this summer I will make a point of getting some photos for comparison. The difference in color is quite striking. We also noted that the efts we found roaming about tended to a more brown shade in the park. Our local efts range from mandarin orange to light orange(orange cream?).