Is this Britain’s most unusual job? National Trust ranger Nick Dunnett spends his days combing the cellars of Lincolnshire’s Tattershall Castle looking for a protected species likened to a “mini dinosaur”.<\/p>\n
His target in the 15th Century attraction near Sleaford is the great crested newt.<\/p>\n
A very large breeding population can be found in the moat and surrounding land.<\/p>\n
“The water in the moats provides opportunities for courtship displays, breading, egg laying and the development of young newts,” says Nick.<\/p>\n
During the winter, some manage to sneak their way into the castle by exploiting old tunnels and cracks in the mortar between bricks.<\/p>\n
Nick says: “Some are known to seek shelter in cold, dark, damp places over winter. The castle’s basement provides excellent opportunity for this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is this Britain’s most unusual job? National Trust ranger Nick Dunnett spends his days combing the cellars of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-414493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}