Mature

R and I went to Stratford this morning, for a meet-up with our co-grandparents, who've been staying there over the weekend. We had a delightful chat about the family, sharing anecdotes, and celebrating as ever how clever we've been in combining two of our children to produce the Boy Wonder and the Baby Brother.

Afterwards R went off home, while I did some essential shopping and then went to the river in search of dragons. There are now a few Migrant Hawkers around, but it was a blisteringly hot day and they were patrolling fast and furiously, rather than hovering obligingly over the reeds and offering portrait opportunities - so I only managed record shots today. However there were also at least four male Brown Hawkers on patrol - two on each side of the river - and they were a little more obliging.

Brown Hawkers are interesting dragons, I think. They're one of our biggest - only the Emperor, the Common Hawker and the Golden-ringed Dragonfly come in larger - but unlike most other big dragons they're largely peaceable. Had there been four male Emperors, or Common or Southern Hawkers, patrolling this relatively small piece of water, they'd have been clashing angrily every few seconds, but by and large the Brown Hawkers left each other alone, their graceful looping flight patterns weaving in and out of each other like a kind of aerial ballet. 

On the subject of flight, the other unusual thing about the Browns is the way they fly: they spend a lot of time gliding, regaining momentum every few seconds with a burst of shallow wingbeats, and then gliding again. This makes them appear to be moving more slowly than hawkers that have a busier style of flight, but that, I can tell you from long experience, is an illusion. They're actually quite hard to capture in flight - not least because their low-contrast colouring tends to defeat the camera's autofocus - and today, once I had enough roughly focused images to prove my record of the sighting, I lowered the camera and just enjoyed the sight of them gliding around each other. The path on the south side of the river serves the new marina and is quite busy, and over the time I was standing there, slightly hypnotised by the scene, several other people stopped to watch as well, and chat to me about these large and graceful dragons. I don't generally appreciate conversational approaches from strangers, but I'm always happy to discuss the wonders of Odonata.

I was lucky that I happened to be in exactly the right place to see this particular dragon land, because he immediately disappeared - "as if by magic!" the Boy Wonder would have said - into the surrounding bramble. It took several seconds of scanning with the macro binoculars for me to locate him, and even then, as soon as I turned to using the camera I found that I'd lost him again, so I had to revert to the binoculars and note the colour and position of the nearest fruit before trying again for some photos. There's an 'end of the season' feel to this image, with the mature Brown Hawker against the rapidly maturing blackberries, which makes me feel a bit sad. But Browns have a long season, and in a good year they can be on the wing well into October, which is a far more cheerful thought. As for the blackberries, those who like them are welcome to them. Even if I ate them (which I don't unless they're unavoidable), I certainly wouldn't be doing it into October, when as any country child knows, the Devil spits on them and turns them bitter. Much like myself, now I come to think of it.