Blown away (again)

Every year stuff comes round and stuff moves on.  Another year, another swallow.  Marvellous though all of the seasonal comings and goings are, I guess we all have those handful of special things that manage to gobsmack us each and every year even though we've seen it all before. 

I was standing in an overgrown field staring at butterflies but it wasn't the ringlet that did it. It was the momentary reflection of sunlight  in the corner of my eye followed by an unmistakable plasticky clatter of wings and then the breathtaking moment when a brand new dragonfly perched on a hazel leaf right in front of me. As I slowly rotated my head to get a proper look without scaring it off, so the female southern hawker slowly rotated its head to and fro and we scrutinised each other. There is no escaping the immense fixed eyes that fold right around the top and sides of the head.

The big hawkers are truly astonishing insects, right at the top end of my list of living things that impress me anew year after year.  I began compiling a top ten in my head of things that never fail to blow me away again with each annual first encounter.  The year's first harebell among the marram grass; the sight and sound of massed geese dropping out of the sky in a Lindisfarne dusk after a summer in the arctic; the first full throated blackbird song of the year; the smell of gorse blossom in early summer sun......  I wonder what yours are?

To see the empty nymph case of a Southern Hawker, click here . The mould of the eyes is fascinating.

Two of the groovier exuvia

There was a UK TV programme in the late '70s called 'Connections' where the presenter, James Burke, flitted randomly from one scientific item to another by means of the most off the wall and sometimes tenuous links.  I loved it, probably because it resembles what goes on in my own head.   For example, on a hot Tuesday last week, I watched the first big dragonfly I've seen this year speeding over an area of rough grassland at work. I always enjoy my annual re-aquaintance with these stunning insects.  It shot by fast and at a distance and the only identification I could manage was that it wasn't Cordulegaster boltonii (one of the few scientific names I seem to be able to remember for some reason), but this is....

Here are my 'Connections' that got me from the field to the photo:-
Dragonflies - helicopters - Noel Edmonds - crash - Hadrian's Wall - Sycamore Gap - my garden - my garage - Cordulegaster boltonii (because I suddenly remembered that I had a Golden-ringed dragonfly exuvia tucked away in a box in there somewhere from years ago.)

The exuviae of the dragonfly nymphs (ie the empty cases that they leave behind when the adults hatch out) have to be amongst the most mesmerising of natural objects you can find.  Perfectly detailed, yet perfectly empty.  All the fine features of the once living nymph are there to be explored. 

This photo shows the underside of the head and the large projectile jaw that fires out those crunching, jagged-edged weapons that make mincemeat of tadpoles.

I also found another one that I had forgotten about. This is the exuvia of a Southern Hawker Aeshna cyanea and whereas the golden-ringed has smallish eyes, this one's are immense and wrap over the whole head. It's worth a click to marvel at the detail. A hollow shell ready to walk off before your eyes.

Meanwhile, me and the family are busy watching the entire Life on Earth series right through again. In one episode, the Guv'nor shows a magnificent fossil of an early dragonfly* that had an astonishing wingspan of 75 cms (the largest insect ever known to have lived). Go on, measure it out on the table. It's immense. The most intriguing question for me however was not answered by the great man. What must it's nymph have been like?  The hawker nymph is fearsome enough at about 4.5 cm long but scaled up, the larva of Attenborough's fossilised monster would have been at least ten times the size - with jaws big enough to take the end off your finger.  'Ahw-sum' as my American niece would say.

(*footnote: there's a photo of a scale model here)