Dragonflies and Damselflies

 Stu Roberts gave a fascinating talk at the Enchanted Hour at the Library yesterday afternoon.

He talked about the differences between dragonflies and damselflies (dragonflies hold their wings out when at rest; damselflies fold their wings along their backs), and he talked about their life cycle.

Dragonflies spend most of their lives as nymphs, which crawl about in the mud at the bottom of ponds.  They can spend up to four years, getting bigger and bigger, until one day they crawl up a reed, and their body splits open at the back so that the adult dragonfly can emerge.  Stu brought some of these cases along to show us, gathered from his own pond.

Dragonflies will live for a whole summer, but damselflies only live for about a week - and August is the best time to see them, along the banks of the Wye and on the Warren.  Mary Anne suggested that he might like to lead a walk in the next week or so, to see if we could find any, and quite a few people were interested, so that might be happening soon.

There will be no Enchanted Hour in September, but in October there will be four talks, one on each Friday afternoon, on the subject of conservation.  Stu will be giving one of those talks.