The Boy Wonder has come to stay for a couple of days, and as usual we began the visit at Slimbridge. They’re running a Dragonfly Festival throughout the school summer holiday – an event of which I strongly approve, as you’d probably expect, but for the slight problem that there are remarkably few dragonflies on the reserve right now. It wouldn’t be absolutely true to say that this stilt walker was the nearest we got to an odonate, but the only actual dragon we saw all day was a single large hawker, which for reasons best known to itself had deserted the wetland pools and scrapes in favour of circling Welly Boot Land, the children’s wet play area.
Still, the Boy had a good time, especially at the small raised ponds where members of staff were conducting a pond-dipping session. I think this may have been the first time he’s tried pond dipping, and to be honest he was far more interested in collecting as many water snails as he could scoop out than in finding aquatic insects, but when one of the other participants caught a Great Diving Beetle larva we went over to take a look at it and he seemed suitably impressed. “Don’t put your fingers anywhere near it!” said the chap in charge. “See those pincers on its head? If it gets the chance it’ll grab you, and if it manages to do that it won’t let go.” Good job, I thought – that’s just the kind of horror story that should appeal to a small boy.
B also enjoyed meeting this “dragonfly”, and for once I was sufficiently switched on to do what any normal person would, and snap the scene on my phone. In order to capture it on my camera I’d have needed to back up about fifty feet, and the chance that my “models” would have held their poses long enough for me to get them both in focus would have been pretty slim.
R: L2, C10, D60.
