A blue dragon, Aeshna mixta, the migrant hawker, is poised at the wood’s edge. Its two pairs of clear, plasticky wings hold a flash of October sunlight and take a moment’s rest to open like solar panels on a satellite. These wings that brrrrr through the airways of the dragonfly’s hunting territory have carried him far: not just the distance from his natal pond where he spent darkly aquatic years as a larva, but maybe hundreds of miles from continental Europe.
Before the second world war, migrant hawkers, as the name implies, travelled here from far away; in more recent years they have bred here and a warming climate has helped expand their range from southern England northwards to Scotland and westwards into Ireland. The population of British-bred migrant hawkers is boosted by actual migrants each year; I don’t know if this dragon is one of those.
The wand of his abdomen is more than 60mm long, with two sky-blue, eye-shaped dots on each dark segment and a yellow triangular mark at the top. His compound, visor-like eyes are also blue and these markings give the dragon the appearance of a creature of alien intelligence from another world. This is true. Dragonflies evolved in the Carboniferous era, 300 million years ago, hunting among giant ferns and cycads aeons before the temperate deciduous forests, and the trees and brambles he perches on, ever existed – a world without autumn.
These wings that carry the dragon from deep time, across continents, to hawk the edge of this wood, receive the light on falling ash leaves, the ochre of lime trees, raindrops on scarlet bryony berries, the scents of fungi and rot, the sound of ravens and wrens, skittering squirrels – flash-in-the-pan species compared to dragonflies.
It is hard to imagine this place without autumn. However changeable seasonal definitions become, the very existence of deciduousness and the world it characterises is now in question. I wonder about the dragonfly as he navigates this wave of probability through time and space: what does his cryptic blue insignia mean; what can his fabulous eyes see; where can his wings take him?
