Eftsoons

This is a great moment for me, albeit not a mothy one. Ever since we came here in 1987, I have longed to share our home with a newt. We have a pond and many, many frogs; and I know that newts exist nearby. We used to catch them when I was a boy at Tile Lane ponds in Adel, where Prince Kropotkin taught Arthur Ransome to skate.

Great anarchist, great children's writer (and Guardian journalist); I'm sure they probably went newt-hunting too. Kropotkin used to stay with the very advanced socialists, the Miss Fords of Adel Grange, and Ransome's father was a prof at the fledgling Leeds university.

Anyway, I was altering the foundations of our done-in-a-day, Challenge Anneka, duck house (not claimed on expenses), when I saw what looked like a very small dragon. Strictly speaking, I think it's an eft, a very good Scrabble word which means young newt. It's my newt. Get it? I think it may be a Great Crested, judging by the leopardskin patterning on its belly and along its flanks.

My younger sister Tessa, very eagle-eyed, spotted this worm - right, detail from the second picture above - in the same chunk of soil which I carefully lifted on a trowel to ferry to my camera. Do newts eat worms? I will Google. I put it back carefully under a pile of stones by the pond, and the worm too. When I went and had a peep an hour so so later, both had gone. To a new sanctuary of their own choice, I hope.

I'm always forgetful about providing something for scale to help you to see how big or small the moths are - or the efts. This one is about two inches from head to the curl in its tail. Maybe the trowel, one of the narrow ones, gives the idea.