Newt it's Not

I thought that we had spotted newts in the seasonal river ('riera' in Catalan) that flows from our spring. But I did not, of course, have my camera.

So I took the camera, and photographed what I thought was a cute young Marbled Newt, Triturus marmoratus, in our very clean spring water:

Newt to be missed

But I was wrong. My friends over at the Montseny Newt LIFE research programme have told me that it's a juvenile salamander, Salamandra salamandra...

Like the newts, the salamanders need the river while they grow - you can just see her external gills in the picture - but then disappear into the grass and woodland as the riera dries up in the summer.

 I'm still sure we have newts. So I'll keep dropping in to the river to see what I can photograph...