Wildlife-friendly torches? (1 Viewer)

Hi,

I have a small collection (c5-10) Smooth newt in my Garden pond, and i recently found out that if you go to your Pond at night and shine a torch down on it, you can see them active (being Nocturnal).

So i did this last night and got absolutely amazing views of the Newts (Males and Females) and really close up.

The one thing i'm concerned about though is the torches. I'm not sure if the light is a little bit blinding for the Newts, and i think it might be as they turn from it, after a while.

So i was just wondering if anyone could shed some light onto whether i'm just talking rubbish, or maybe there might be some type of torches you can buy that are unharmful to wildlife, but are as good as the "common torch"?

I remember back to Springwatch where they used a Red (prob Infrared, but i can't remember what he said) to shine on a Tawny owl in the local park, and using it they could see it clearly, but the Owl couldn't, would this work for Newts or is just Owls?

Cheers, and thanks for reading all that if you did.

Have you tried a handheld night vision baby monitor.

ayasuda said:

Have you tried a handheld night vision baby monitor.

Click to expand...

Thanks. Do they work well?

I wouldn't worry too much about it light doesn't travel that far underwater. In general most nocturnal animals are unable to see low powered red or green light. A small headlight eg. Energiser with 2 white LED's and 1 red LED would be really useful. Whilst the white LED's are surprisingly bright the red would be ideal.

There are some mixed feeling about the baby monitors. You'll have to read the buyers guide on the mid to top models for performance. Anything lower than mid grade seems highly suspect. I haven't been able to test this for birds yet, but it's another way to observe a location without stressing out the birds. There are color monitors w/ night vision as well.

When looking in my home ponds I use a head torch, and 2 small hand ones one in each hand. They don't mind too much, and will carry on doing what they do. Any brighter than this at close quarters you will see them shy away.
sooo.......if they ignore you, you're ok. If they run away and hide it's too bright.