If they are 'oaring' underwater they are either
water boatmen or backswimmers. Two different kinds of bugs. If you take a
backswimmer out of water and flip him over he will struggle to get back to his
version of upright. He also swims at a bit of an angle. He will bite you so be
careful!
Water boatmen swim in a more erratic fashion, kindof jerky, and will not munch
on you.

Insects in the pond are part of the natural cycle.
Thousands of species of insects start their lives in water, practically live
their whole life in water and then change to thier adult form to live for a
short while breeding the next generation.

I often take a small net to my fishless bog area and scoop up insect larvae.
Once I had a damselfly nymph and a bloodworm in my white china dish and watched
the damselfly nymph gooble up that bloodworm. You could see the worm inside the
translucent damselfly.

You can tell I'm a bit of a nut about insects ;-)




k30a