Newt(Triton) – the most widespread and massive in Europe representative of the family, it is found everywhere in the center of the European part of Russia. Its range extends to the east to the south of Western Siberia, the most eastern isolated populations are known in the Altai. In the north, an ordinary newt comes to South Karelia, in the south it extends to the Caucasus.
It also occurs in the mountains at an altitude of over two thousand meters.
This newt is common in forests of various types, in forest-steppes, marshes, less common among meadows. He is not afraid of the closeness of people, easily populates the landscapes created by man and, if he does not interfere, he feels great in parks, gardens, orchards, among pastures, rural and urban buildings and even in landfills. The main thing is that he can find a pond with standing or low-flow water and a place for winter shelter.
Reservoirs are necessary for newts, because in them occurs reproduction, development of larvae, and the adults themselves conduct an aquatic life in spring and early summer. To the quality of water bodies, ordinary newts do not make special demands. They prefer shallow ponds with clear water, densely overgrown with water and coastal vegetation, inhabited by various small livestock. But they can also settle in lakes, marshes, ditches, puddles, water basins, old men, water-filled pits. Ordinary tritons do not show such, as in some tailless amphibians, a pronounced attachment to their “native” (in which they were born) a reservoir. Therefore, they quickly populate new ones that arise for one reason or another.
