House of the Dragon

They have exploded on to the scene this week, the dragonflies.

Not just appeared. Exploded. Last week there were a few smaller iridescent blue things about the pond, which I now discover may be damselflies, because nature has rules and I have a coffee cup. 

This week the big ones have arrived. Proper dragonflies. Large greenish, metallic, four-engine jobs, holding the air as if they own it.

The pond water is noticeably warmer after the little heatwave, and that seems to have been the signal. Somewhere under the lilies and among the pond weed, a lot of rather grim aquatic larvae have apparently decided that now is the moment to stop being underwater monsters and become aircraft.

It is a ridiculous process when you actually look at it.

They climb out of the water, grip a reed or some convenient bit of vegetation, split open the back of the old body, and haul a completely different creature out of it. Then they hang there while the wings expand and harden. That is not a minor upgrade. That is not fitting a better carburettor. That is a submarine becoming an aircraft.

Some do not make it, like the chap below. One must have lost its grip or fallen back into the water while trying to emerge. At that stage they are helpless. Soft, damp, half-assembled, and with no opportunity to ring the AA. If the wings do not set properly, or they fall, that is it. Nature does not do customer service.

But the ones that do make it are magnificent. The empty cases cling to the reeds like little abandoned diving suits. You look at them and realise that something has gone. Something that lived in the pond for years as a small underwater predator has climbed out through its own back and flown away.

There is something properly wonderful about that. Not sweet, not cosy, not the twee version of nature with a soundtrack and a slow-motion bee. This is real nature. Mud, predation, risk, transformation and then, suddenly, beauty with wings.

And all of it is happening in the pond as if it is perfectly ordinary.

Yesterday it was fish, blanket weed, lilies and a few newts minding their own business. Today it is a small air force. Tomorrow, no doubt, they will be mating on the reeds while I stand there pretending to be David Attenborough in gardening shoes.

You can also see why JK Rowling used Chasers in Quidditch. These things do not merely fly about. They pursue, intercept, turn on nothing, stop in mid-air, and then accelerate off as if some invisible schoolboy has just shouted something in Latin at them. They're almost impossible to capture on camera as they never stay still long enough.

Metamorphosis really is one of those things we slightly under-react to because it happens all the time. A creature lives underwater, climbs out, opens itself up, becomes something else, inflates wings and flies away.

And I shall probably still spend half the afternoon worrying about the blanket weed.