I initially assumed that the depths near the centre of the pond were entirely sealed off from my air-breathing world above, with its relentless sunshine and skylark song. But no. I gradually realised that the life within was sensitive to the outside, and to me. The more inanimate I became, the more the underwater place revealed itself. Initially, it was just whirligig beetles, backswimmers and pond skaters sailing across the pond’s meniscus past my feet.
Then common newts began to show and I realised the weed was full of them. As I drilled down with binoculars into this other realm, almost plunging mentally under and adjusting scale to the micro-movements of newts, I began to re-see the pondweed’s 3D structure; the complex geometrical patterns in its right-angled limbs. Slowly, it started to resemble the molten and twisted girders in some long-drowned city.
It was in these unwelcoming depths that newts performed two separate actions. One was a quick, tail-wafted ascent as individuals sculled to the surface to breathe. Then down they went, their loose-jointed forearms pressed behind their backs to minimise drag, reminding me a little of Superman whenever he’s about to fly. Newts are, in truth, more at home in our realm of air and terra firma, only spending the spring months in water to breed.
This was a key to their other behaviour. Male common newts in spring acquire waving crest ridges down their backs and laterally compressed tails. On to his body’s smoky grey-green ground colour, spring paints thick black spots and exquisite powder-blue and orange lines along the tail edge. His hind feet are webbed like a salamander’s and each toe blobbed black.
When ready to mate, the sexes don’t unite in some subaquatic clinch. Rather, he swims around her, brushing her with his sinuous, corrugated tail, then swims away. But she follows. As he goes, he leaves a dissolving fertility packet – technically a spermatophore – over which she glides, rests and opens her cloaca. And the water – the living fabric that sustains them – literally becomes party to their own reproduction, so that it is union in all senses – through time, via place and into new life.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
