BIRD WATCH at Arundel Wildlfowl and Wetlands Trust

AS we roll into summer there are excellent opportunities for seeing adult dragonflies. We don't have many large, beautiful and fasinating insects in the UK so it would be well worth taking a bit of time to walk along a woodland ride or go and stroll next to a pond, canal, or other wetland ( even your garden and garden pond could be supporting a few).

The adult stage that we see flying around actually represents a small part of the animal's life. Dragonflies, like many other flying insects, are aquatic for most of their lives, which can be up to five years.

Life begins as an egg, either scattered by the adult insects over water (look for a dragonfly dipping its tail in the water as it flies, each dip releases a few eggs into the water where they fall down and stick to submerged weeds) or laid carefully into a plant stem or other vegetation; females have a sharp spike on their abdomen for ovipositing in plant stems. Some may over-winter as an egg, others as larvae.

Dragonfly larvae are amongst the top predators in the pond, especially amongst the insects anyway. Like jaguars in the jungle, dragonflies generally sit and wait amongst the plant stems underwater, firing out their hinged jaw to catch anything suitable that passes and some species submerge themselves in the mud, grabbing their prey as it passes overhead

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette June 27