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Yesterday I was in the kitchen around midday when I heard a mysterious and quite loud noise. It sounded a bit like a half-speed football rattle, and it seemed to be coming from the window above the sink. On closer inspection it was coming from behind the food recycling bin we keep on the windowsill, handy for scraping the plates into before putting them in the sink. I stood in puzzlement for a few seconds, and then exclaimed aloud, ‘Good God!’ (which is not an expression I ever normally use), as something huge emerged, battering itself against the glass: a dragonfly, striped in yellow and black. The thing was a good four inches long with a wingspan to match. Impressive might be the word. No wonder it was making so much noise.
Yes, we do have a pond only a couple of hundred yards away, but what was this dragonfly doing in our kitchen? Dragonflies are not bumbling, erratic fliers like, for instance, stag beetles. They catch in their food, other insects, in flight, and even mate on the wing. They are very accomplished aeronauts indeed, and they have prodigious powers of eyesight. I imagine it must have flown in through the back door, which was open at the time.
More important, how was I going to help it escape? Only the top pane of this window opens, and I duly opened it, but the dragonfly was alternating between getting its breath back (so as to speak) on the windowsill and further frantic attempts to fly through the bottom pane, refusing to rise more than a few inches above the sill. I have been known to deal with butterflies in such situations by trapping them under a cup and sliding a sheet of paper underneath, but that was not going to work with this monster.
Hmm. Maybe I wouldn’t have to actually trap it. All that was necessary was to force it to fly higher, up to that top pane. I found a largish sheet of cardboard, waited until the dragonfly was well airborne, slid the cardboard horizontally beneath it, butting the glass, and lifted. It worked first time. With a flash of yellow and black our uninvited visitor was off.
A little corner of my mind was almost sorry to see it go. I had no desire to keep it from living its natural life, and even less to have it cannoning around the house, but this encounter with the largest and most spectacular insect I have ever seen close up outside captivity had been rather fascinating.
Dragonflies are increasing Dragonfly species are colonising the UK ‘at a greater rate than ever before’ | Natural History Museum (nhm.ac.uk)
I can’t remember if it was last summer or 2020 that we had dragonflies in the garden even though there are no ponds nearby.
The Big Butterfly Count starts today if you’re interested — and can cope with the heat!
It only occurred to me after posting to do a bit of investigating, and it turns out this must have been a female golden-ringed dragonfly, which is the longest British dragonfly and is often found quite some way from water.
We had one of those alight on the edge of our utility room door a little while ago. Huge, and very striking. Almost big enough to have the same sort of presence as a bird rather than an insect. Can’t find pics of it now, but we fairly often see them out and about, along with different types of dragonfly and damselfly.
<p>I’ve never seen one that big in the UK but we spent a few summers holidaying in Finland when I was a child. Coming back from the lake one day my sister and I found a huge green and gold (or maybe brown and gold, I can’t remember exactly) dragonfly lying motionless on the path. We prodded it (gently) but it didn’t move so we concluded it was dead. It was beautiful so we picked it up and carried it to the cottage to examine it more closely. The cottage had a large enclosed verandah/porch, and the light was very good there, so we put the dragonfly on the table in the porch and looked at it. Then mother said we had to go shopping, so off we went. When we came back it sounded as if a chinook helicopter was flying around the porch. The dragonfly had come to life and was trying to find a way out! I can’t remember how mother got it out but probably employed a method similar to Richard’s and ushered it to the door.</p>
There’s something awe-inspiring about coming into contact with truly large insects and similar bugs, and your blog reminded me of an incident on holiday in Spain, years ago. We’d rented a cottage and on the last day we were cleaning up and I’d put a bin-bag by the door. I reached down to retrieve what looked like a piece of vegetation poking out from underneath, but the “stalk” fought back and pulled away. I lifted the bag and out scuttled a huge centipede, maybe six inches long – somewhat more impressive than the one inch variety in our garden. My most recent encounter with wildlife is somewhere between charming and annoying. I was sitting writing when I heard one of the cats crunching away at its dry food (Lyra likes wet food, Piper prefers dry). After a while it occurred to me that she was eating more than usual and I glanced up to see a fox cub that had marched into the house and was tucking in.
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