Eastern newt slithers along at LeRoy Oakes

This year, of course, spring came in February. That's when Kane County Forest Preserve District Naturalist Josh Libman was hiking at LeRoy Oakes Forest Preserve in St. Charles and spotted something strange on the trail - tiny and orange.

He bent down to look at it closely. It was about four inches long, had four legs, and looked like a plastic toy. He snapped a photo and returned to the nature center.

When he showed me the photo, my first hunch was a newt - but I had never seen them here, and it was, after all, February.

I deferred to the expertise of our colleague Pam Otto, naturalist with the St. Charles Park District. Yes, indeed, Pam replied, the little critter was an eastern newt!

Why the exclamation point?

Not only are eastern newts uncommon in northeastern Illinois, there were no newts on record at this forest preserve - until Josh's discovery.

OK, so what the heck is a newt? Newts are salamanders.

If you've heard of newts at all, you may be the literary type. "Eye of newt and toe of frog," chanted the witches in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" as they stirred the caldron. Eye of newt is part of the famous recipe for casting spells.

Newts in the biological world are really cool creatures.

They're oddballs among salamanders, in that they go through four stages in life.

They begin as eggs on submerged vegetation in ponds. In a matter of two weeks, the eggs transform into larvae.

The larvae have legs and a tail and other features that we would recognize as salamander-y, but they also sport big feathery gills.

Each strange-looking larva then morphs into something called an eft. This is the teenage stage in newt life.

The tiny efts are terrestrial, and they hang out on the forest floor (often hiding under logs).

In a year or two, the juveniles grow up and become responsible adults, with a job to do - they return to the water to breed.

The good-looking specimen Josh found is noteworthy because newts are rarely seen in Kane County, and salamander activity is determined by temperature and moisture.

February is not a month when newts would/should be perambulating on the trail.

Temperatures this February, though, reached a balmy 69 degrees.

Traditionally, temperatures in February range from 26 to 34 degrees, which is way too chilly for salamanders.

Salamanders - and amphibians in general - are subject to lots of environmental challenges.

A warming climate does not necessarily bode well for them, especially if it is accompanied by drier conditions, warmer ponds, and/or loss of prey.

Additionally, amphibians breathe through their skin and are sensitive to pollutants such as road salt.

They are, in a sense, the canaries in the coal mine. When amphibian populations decline, there is trouble in the environment.

Finding a salamander in a forest preserve may be a good sign. It means that the habitat is in good shape.

Finding a salamander in February is, well, odd. It's a wait-and-see situation as our crazy winters break records.

After snapping the photo of the little newt, Josh watched it amble on its way.

This is always the best thing to do when you find a cool animal in a preserve. Take a photo; don't take the creature.

With luck, the salamander found its way back to shelter before the next cold snap came.

Here's hoping it will be in the pond with its friends come April, when breeding season begins in earnest.

• Valerie Blaine is a naturalist with the Kane County Forest Preserve District. You may reach her at blainevalerie@kaneforest.com.