Sunday 7th July

I occasionally saw dragonflies as a child, but not that often, and I cannot really remember being that impressed by them.  We learnt in school that they were in fact one of the earliest of insect species and have hardly changed in millions of years.  While bees and wasps and flies and spiders went off and evolved into all sorts of weird and wonderful variations the humble dragonfly just kept on eating and reproducing, hovering gently over ponds and swamps and not bothering to change in the slightest.

And when you look at them you can see why.  They are actually perfect.  They resemble miniature helicopters, hovering on the spot, then swooping and diving to the surface of the water, then off again in the blink of an eye.  If you look carefully though you can see the wings are nothing like a helicopter.  There are two sets of wings on each side of the short thorax just behind the dragonflies head, and they stick out at ninety degrees and revolve around each other.  In slow motion this can be seen as two interweaving figures of eight.  But incredibly fast, and by the perfection of it they never hit each other, they simply move around each other in perfect sychronisation, their muscles relaxing and expending hundreds of times a second.

But as well as being the most perfect flying machines ever invented, capable of keeping them perfectly still in the air, or moving up or down or back or forwards with ease they are also incredibly beautiful.  Their colours are irredescent blue and green and shimmer in the sunlight.  Amazing if what the scientists say is true and this was indeed one of the very first insect species, because they are just so wonderful.

And now I look out for them, especially now in mid-summer as they skim over the lakes and ponds unchanging and unchanged and totally unaware of the modern world and humans, who will surely never last another million years let alone the many millions that dragonflies have been around for.