The Amphibians are loving the wet weather.

Its raining every day, often all day, and much of this county seems to be underwater. The national press have got wind of it and the plight of those living in a shallow sea on the Somerset levels is now on the TV each evening, and quite rightly so. The county's amphibians are, I am sure, delighted with this state of affairs and I spent several fun hours with teachers and children in the school pond on Saturday, removing reed clumps. I didn't do this last year, not wishing to disturb the wildlife, but with all of the open water gone and the pond at risk of becoming a waterless bog garden I had arranged to carve up some of the plant growth and we pulled the heavy clumps onto the side of the bank to let creatures crawl back into the water. Stepping tentatively in the pond I used a net to move anything in the way to avoid injury to wildlife and the water was already bristling with spring activity. Newts were the dominant large creature, with some year old juveniles sporting gills, many smooth newts both males and gravid females and quite a number of beautiful male great crested newts. The size difference between the great crested and smooth newts is apparent in the photographs and it's so exciting to see so many of these wonderful rare creatures. There were also a number of young frogs and although a predictably small number of insect species, in January, there were water scorpions and dragonfly larvae. We carefully returned everything back to the water and left the pond with a variety of weed areas, planting and some open water predictably rippling under the impact of the falling rain.