What my favicon shows and why?

Certainly not many people know this amazing animal, which is the crested newt, I was lucky to meet them long time ago in forest ponds.

There were many puddles, water holes and small ponds in the forest at the time, where newts liked to live. However, seeing them was not easy without proper knowledge, because they feel the shock of footsteps spreading in the ground and water very well. When something worried them, they quickly hid at the bottom of the pond or in the mud, so you had to sneak well (tracking newts is a bit like hunting monsters of witcher 😊).

Once they were approached, they could be admired because they looked like little sea monsters. In appearance they resemble lizards, but they are tailed amphibians, have a fin around the tail, different colors, but many of them have beautiful bright-orange bellies, and in the mating season males grow on the back comb resembling spikes of Godzilla. Another species lived there, that was mountain newts.

However, I liked their behavior the most, because their favorite activity was to drift in the water with their paws spread sideways and looked as if they were fully relaxed.

Sometimes I caught newts with my hands to see them more closely, and then released them, but one day something extraordinary happened to me, I saw and caught a newt that was completely white. It was an albino, and his or her light color helped him, which is rare in nature, because he masked well in light mud.

Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending. With time, the puddles were less and less, the water level was lowered, the small tanks dried up in the summer and the rainbow colors of spilled gasoline began to appear on the surface of the ponds. In these conditions, the newts in the forest quickly became extinct, and I haven't seen them in over a decade, so they probably won't come back.

I read recently that amphibians are dying the fastest on planet Earth and even in my area it can be seen, that's why I hope you realize that even if most people do not notice negative changes it does not mean that they do not occur, because the newts have died out very quietly, without echoes and I doubt if anyone but me noticed, and they are not the only animals that I no longer see, but I miss them the most.

So I chose newt for my favicon because it is a symbol of something extraordinary, mysterious and what you need to care for.

I just drew a crested newt for you.