How Do I Know if it is A Great Crested Newt?

 
I get this question a lot, and the answer is when you see one… you’ll know.
Great Crested Newts are the largest of the three native species of newt found in the UK, not just a little bit bigger, a lot bigger!
They are also black, with bright yellow bellies, compared to the other two species, smooth newts and palmate newts, which range from dark brown to soft green-brown with yellow bellies.
The picture below shows three newts. The Middle one is an Adult Great Crested Newt, The One to the Left is a juvenile Great Crested Newt. The one to the right is an adult Palmate Newt. As you can see the Adult Palmate Newt is smaller than the juvenile Great Crested Newt. In the next picture you can see a great crested newt eft (baby) eating an eft of another species (you can see about half its body, the tail end). Both efts will be a similar age, but you can see the size difference becomes apparent very early in the Newts lifecycle. The final of the three pictures is a juvenile palmate newt. If you compare the size of the Eft in the second picture to the juvenile in the last picture you can clearly see the size and colour difference is very obvious.