Water Babies

I was given the honour of helping with bath time. Not all babies are totally on board with this activity but, if you name your baby after a marsh, you hope for the best and, so far, nominative determinism is doing its stuff. Of course, you don't want water in his eyes, and even adults adopt all sorts of strategies to keep water out. Our underwater vision is poor, our eyes are not adapted for it

Imagine that we had another set of eyes, adapted for the purpose, that we could switch to when submerged. I've discovered that's what these guys have: eyes that are split horizontally into an upper half that sees best in the air and a lower half for underwater. Floating on the surface, they can use both halves

Actually, they are a pretty amazing, all-purpose, insect predator. They have an extremely impressive turn of speed across the surface. If they see prey, with their underwater eyes they can dive and chase it - they carry a bubble of air and have a kind of gills, so they can stay under for a long chase. And if they need to, they lift their wing cases and start flying! 

All of which misses their most distinctive characteristic, and gives them their name - whirlygig beetles. They paddle themselves, semi-submerged across the surface at extraordinary speed in tight circles - the whirling dervishes of the insect kingdom. I suppose it makes it difficult to predict their trajectory, so prey find it harder to move out of the way. This group had raised the practice to a performance art form - all spinning together, tracing interlocking circles and spirals on the water to create complex Celtic knots in front of your eyes

I have no idea if I could have got a clearer focus. I thought about pretending it is an abstract! Smart phones: love 'em and hate 'em

All this whirling is on a tiny rivulet that flows into the Bourne Brook, the waterway that inspired the name of Bourneville, the visionary development of workers' houses built by the Cadbury family to support the factory they built over the brook, where it still dominates now gentrified Birmingham suburb. I wonder if someone from the product development department saw the insects during their lunch break and was inspired