THE MAGIC OF DRAGONFLIES

They darted about, hovered and swooped, gossamer wings sparkling in the sunlight in a relentless dance of summer.

As theatre groups rehearsed productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we had our own Oberon and Titania, Shakespeare’s King and Queen of the Fairies, flitting over our pond.

They came in the shape of damselflies and dragonflies and, to judge by the cast-off skins on the lilies, many had just hatched out of the pond. At any one time there were about 20 common blue damselflies, 10 large red damselflies and, darting from perches on irises, broad-bodied chasers.

This fat dragonfly with a big blue abdomen looked, compared with the damselflies, like a jumbo jet next to a Spitfire.

All of them had only two things in mind – food and sex. The male blues and reds were using the tips of their tails to grab females by the back of  the neck in a mating ritual to put bedroom gymnasts to shame.

They refused to let go until the females deposited their eggs on to the pondweed.

Katherine Parkes, of the British Dragonfly Society, says the males hold on to the females to deter rivals but also to be chivalrous.

Sometimes the female disappears underwater as she lays her eggs – and her lover pulls her out.

These delicate midge-eaters are helping chart climate change. Across Europe, species are moving ever further northwards as temperatures rise. We are being colonised by continentals – small red-eyed damselfly,
red-veined and yellow-winged darters and lesser emperors.

The latter are even thought to have been blown here from Scandinavia.

But they are doomed to live fast and die young. Most will last only a week before being snapped up by birds for dinner. Some creatures just have no respect for magic.

** Send sightings to the national atlas at www.dragonflysoc.org.uk