Lizards and newts

Lizards have scaly skin and lay shelled eggs. Amphibians (toads, newts and frogs) have smooth skins, lay eggs in water (mainly ponds), and newts wrap their eggs in submerged pond vegetation.

Newts spend several months of the year in ponds to breed; while lizards may use ponds to replenish water supplies, they do not live in the water.

Pictured above is a juvenile sand lizard. The other two native lizard species in the UK are the slow worm and the viviparous lizard also known as a common lizard. Viviparous lizards have live birth rather than laying eggs, although the young lizards are delivered in a membrane.

Courtship and mating reach a peak in May. Development of the eggs takes about three months and gravid females may be seen basking in later stages of pregnancy, to maintain high growth rates of the embryos.

Males have orange or yellow bellies with black spots and females have cream or white bellies. Males have a larger head and more slender body and pronounced swelling around the vent at the base of the tail.

Common lizards hunt insects, spiders, snails and earthworms. They stun their prey by shaking it, and then swallow it whole.