Magical creatures
AN APPRECIATION OF DRAGONFLIES
Sit by any riverbank on a sunny afternoon in June and the air will be filled with flying jewellery. Winged brooches of emerald-green and burnished amber hurry back and forth above the water, while ruby-hued hairpins skim across its surface. Travel back 350 million years and you’d be greeted by a similar sight, for dragonflies are ancient creatures. Except, in prehistoric times, these spectacular insects were flying giants: fossil records suggest that the dragonfly’s early ancestors were four times the size of the largest species alive today.
Dragonflies were once feared for their supposed ability to bite or sting. Their former folk names attest to this: adder bolt, horse stinger and (my favourite) devil’s darning needle. However, they’re completely harmless to humans and should only inspire awe, not dread.
They’re absolute masters of the air. Like a helicopter, a dragonfly can move in all directions and hover on the spot. With four wings working independently of each other, beating at up to 55 times a second, it can switch direction in a moment. This makes for a formidable aerial predator. Dragonflies snatch midges, flies and even butterflies out of the sky with ruthless ease, often consuming their meals in flight. However, on a family walk once, I watched a pair of discarded dragonfly wings flutter to the ground, like a fallen sycamore seed. Overhead, a hobby – a type of falcon – was dispatching and devouring dragonflies with even greater expertise. My daughter kept the wings in a jewellery box, wrapped in tissue paper, like scraps of veined lace.
After spending most of their lives underwater as larval nymphs, adult dragonflies emerge in June to feed and mate. Look out for pairs holding each other in a heartshaped embrace or ‘mating wheel’ as it’s known. But it’s not as romantic as it sounds: during copulation, the male uses special hooks on its tail, called claspers, to grip the female by her head. Later, she’ll lay her eggs in water or on water-plants, sometimes while still attached to her suitor.
Around 40 kinds of dragonfly (and their close relatives, damselflies) breed in the UK. They can be difficult to identify, especially as they don’t stay still for long. But their names often offer a clue as to what to look out for: hawkers cruise at eye level, darters dash from place to place, skimmers fly low across the water and chasers shoot out at passing prey from a plant-stem perch. Three of the easiest to spot are the Brown hawker with its tea-stained wings; the Broad-bodied chaser, whose chunky tail looks to have been dipped in pale-blue powder paint; and the brightly-coloured Emperor – which has a wingspan of up to 12cm, making it almost an honorary bird.
Of course, you don’t need to know which species they are to enjoy their spectacular aerial display this summer. Just lie back on that riverbank, or at the fringes of a garden pond, and enjoy the sight of these natural treasures glittering above you. Because each and every one’s a gem.