Natural BORN thrillers
They’re nature’s deadliest predators. And dragonflies are now spreading their wings across Britain — as HORATIO CLARE discovers on a glorious pond safari
Aheavy, gilded afternoon, muggy with Indian summer heat, the trees still and the air sticky — this is the perfect time to hunt for them. hawkers, emperors, Clubtails and Darters, they bear fantastical names, glitter with iridescent colours, and they are coming to a pond near you.
Chances are they are already there, quartering the reeds like mineral knights flying biplanes.
according to a new report, dragonflies and damselflies are increasing in distribution across the British Isles, flying and hunting and breeding into new territories, thanks, it is thought, to our warming world.
The British Dragonfly Society studied all 46 species of dragonflies and damselflies found here, drawing on 1.4million records from over 17,000 recorders. Its findings, published in the State Of Dragonflies 2021, show these striking creatures are spreading northwards, with more than 40 per cent of species widening their range since 1970.
as a squirrel scolded in a beech tree and a kestrel flopped through thick sunlight from shade to shade, I set out on an unusual safari. I drew my briefing from Keith Gittens, a recorder for the British Dragonfly Society and chairman of the yorkshire branch. his youTube channel and Facebook page are invaluable resources for novice dragonfly-spotters.
‘[Dragonflies] are a top predator feeding on other insects,’ he says. ‘a good population of dragonflies at a site is an indicator there is a range of other insect species there as well. It also means the quality of the water is good. you need a pond, clean water and lots of marginal vegetation.’
Deep in the woods of Crimsworth Dean, in a ruck of the moors above hebden Bridge in West yorkshire, there is a pool, an old reservoir half-choked with bulrushes and little visited. If it has a name, I do not know it. My son and I go there all year round. In the early spring it was iced over. Down in the freezing darkness, in the ooze below the ice or unseen in the black water, there were larvae.
Depending on the species, dragonflies and damselflies spend two to three months or up to five years as larvae, or nymphs. These are not the kind of nymphs you might like to meet disporting in sunny glades beside crystalline pools. These are the kind of nymphs that have extendable jaws which shoot out to catch and consume prey.
Ridley Scott’s aliens may nod in fraternal appreciation, but even they might feel a bit queasy and pedestrian on closer encounter with these nymphs, which breathe through gills in the rectum and jet forward by expelling water through the anus.
One can only hope that at least some of the tadpoles, crustaceans, insect larvae and small fish these nymphs eat die laughing. It would be like being murdered and gulped down by a hellish cross between predator and Benny hill.
The ancient predecessors of the modern dragonfly lived and lunched 275 million years ago. They were the size and weight of crows. Their larvae would surely have ruled out wild swimming.
Buttery sunlight slid between the leaves of the wood as I drew closer to the pond, moving quietly. Months ago, as the days lengthened and the weather warmed, the larvae emerged, first into the shallows, where they began to breathe air.
Days later, they moved on to land or vegetation, where their ‘incomplete metamorphosis’ took place — incomplete, as dragon and damselflies have no pupal stage, transitioning to adulthood straight from the larvae.
Once out of the water, the larvae’s body fluids are redistributed. The thorax, wings, legs and head push out of the larval skin. For about half an hour these dry and harden, and then the abdomen appears, the wings are extended, and in another half-an-hour, the dragonfly makes its maiden flight.
While the creatures living in the pond may be relieved to see them go, anything that flies and is smaller than a bird is seriously in peril. Dragonflies eat moths, butterflies, midges, mosquitos, flies and smaller dragonflies and damselflies. The larger species cruise at just below ten miles per hour and can accelerate to more than 30.
With a set each of forewings and hindwings, they can migrate across seas, generate lift in at least four different ways, move in any direction, hover, and change direction in a fraction of the time it takes you to blink.
as I crouched beside the pond, I knew that if there were any about they would see me before I saw them. They have 360-degree vision and they see much faster than we do, processing 200 images per second (we do somewhere between ten and 60). They perceive the world in slow motion while moving swiftly through it.
No wonder they are among the world’s most efficient hunters, killing and eating 95 per cent of the prey they attack.
It was beautiful beside the pool.
The bulrushes leaned heavily on one another, as if snoozing through the heat. There were rings in the water and little splashes and motions where the frogs and toads were in the spring.
Midges and small insects swam over the water and time seemed to melt back into the trees. It was as though the whole afternoon was one moment, as bright and still as the quiet sky.
and then there it was. huge! Long and gold and green it looked, about a foot above the pond and patrolling through the reeds. having set out to come and find it, and having stalked up and kept quiet and searched for it, to see it all at once, just there, gave me a thump of excitement — it was every bit as thrilling as seeing a goshawk or an eagle, or anything you set out to track down.
It dodged, and then another appeared, or was it the same one? They looked like apache helicopters, sinister and magnificent. Then there was a shift in the air in front of me, inches away, and a sudden whirr of wings.
One of them had come up on me unseen and pulled off the perfect ambush. had I been one of its prey species it would now be disposing of me by the dragonfly’s preferred method: a bite on the head to subdue me, a short flight to a suitable perch, more bites to strip my wings away and then — chomp. Down I go, head first. It was extremely impressive.
I was once ambushed by a hippo which bit my canoe in half. although it (just) missed me, this dragonfly did not.
they use motion camouflage to take prey in flight. By setting a course which keeps them on a direct line between the start of the attack run and the point at which they make the interception, from the prey’s point of view they do not seem to move, only to grow bigger.
as an amateur I was uncertain of the identity of the four I saw. Two were large and green-gold, possibly golden-ringed dragonflies.
One, a damselfly, was a beautiful red and surely a common darter. another, my ambusher, was patterned in lapis lazuli blue, most likely a common hawker. If it was one of these then I was lucky — the common hawker is one of the few species in retreat, its range shrinking, perhaps because of the loss of peat bogs.
emperors, ruddy darters, migrant hawkers and black-tailed skimmers are among those which are spreading out.
In Native american lore, the dragonfly is a symbol of change, self-realisation and growth.
It would be lovely to think we might see more of them, though the British Dragonfly Society (which has an excellent identification guide on its website) cannot be sure of an increase in numbers, only in distribution.
I will not forget my dragonfly safari. It was miraculous and startling in its own way, and while the weather lasts, while the month lasts — they are not seen after September — I am going to go looking for them again, to salute as much as to study their beauty, their skill and their ferocity.
■ Horatio Clare’s latest book, Heavy light: a Journey through Madness, Mania and Healing, is out now.