Close encounters on the garden pond tend to be of the "eat or be eaten" kind. The water measurer seems to understand that. This centimetre-long aquatic stick insect waits for a clear run before pitter-pattering over the surface with precise, dainty steps and halting at the home base of a potamogeton leaf. There it sits on stilt legs with its pin-thin elongated head slightly bowed. It is fishing – waiting for a water flea to swim close enough to be speared from above.
But I cannot make out the water skaters' behaviour, though. Their jerky surges end in collisions but, instead of bouncing off each other, one invariably lands on top. It is rarely a clean mount. One rider's head addresses an abdomen, another sits askew, facing its partner's middle leg. Are they trying to mate, assert dominance, or simply assess if the body underneath is food, foe or neither? Each coupling ends in an undignified unseating and, after untangling, rider and ridden scull off in different directions. Do insects play?
Towards the middle of the pond, a sudden upwelling from below, like a huge burp, causes a floating pondweed leaf to billow then sink back down again. It happens twice more and then my incautious fingers lift the lid to reveal a two-headed newt beneath. It takes a moment for the illusion to explain itself. The female newt holds her head and shoulders above the water's surface. Protruding from her open mouth are the head and thorax of a damselfly nymph. Two-thirds of the living meal is already swallowed.
The top of the insect's abdomen engorges the newt's throat. The short antennae above the half-hemisphere eyes of the damselfly nymph are still, but the legs bunched along its thorax are waving slowly. It is a last goodbye, for the newt plops below the surface of the pond and sinks out of sight.