Nature Calls: Marvel at the migrant hawker dragonfly’s aerial prowess

The migrant hawker dragonfly (Image: Getty Photographs)

Autumn is right here. Hedges and bushes are loaded with blackberries, sloes, elderberries, hips and haws and bushes with walnuts, chestnuts and acorns. There was a dew this morning.

However summer season clings on at Northward Hill RSPB Reserve, which overlooks Cooling Marshes in Kent. It alternates heat then cool as massive clouds shift over a blue sky.

Speckled wooden butterflies fling themselves up in corkscrews as we cross. A small copper perches on a creeping thistle, burnt orange and black in opposition to the pale purple flower.

The rosebay willowherb is in now in seed however some pink petals stay. Every seed has a tiny parachute – they float off like tiny feathers as we brush by.

Simply over there may be the stays of Cooling Radio Station, which allowed shortwave communication between Britain and the US throughout World Struggle II.

And looking out north throughout the Thames to Thurrock, Essex, is the colossal London Gateway port advanced, able to receiving probably the most monumental container ships on the planet.

A migrant hawker dragonfly perched on the reed thicket (Image: Getty Photographs/iStockphoto)

We hear the ‘yaffle’ giggle of a inexperienced woodpecker earlier than seeing it – that undulating flight sample that traces a slow-motion sound wave, bouncing left to proper in entrance of the port cranes miles distant. We see sufficient to register the gray head of a juvenile.

Additionally listed here are the true masters of flight, these creatures that make all others appear pedestrian.

Northward Hill in Kent (Image: Alamy)

Northward Hill RSPB Reserve overlooks Cooling Marshes, with the Thames estuary and Essex in distance (Image: Alamy)

We're speaking about dragonflies. Their 4 wings can transfer independently of one another to allow them to pull aerial tips much more spectacular than the rest.

They'll fly backwards, forwards, up, down sideways and even hover – altering route in lower than a blink of the attention. And all at velocity.

Think about Keanu Reeves’ character, Neo, in comparison with Agent Smith on the finish of the primary Matrix movie and also you’re someplace close to the concept of how they appear to function in keeping with a distinct physics.

London Gateway past the pure marshland of Thameside Nature Park (Image: Alamy)

Inexperienced woodpeckers might be heard ‘laughing’ on the Thames Nature Park (Image: Alamy)

And the colors. What we're seeing listed here are migrant hawkers, which seem a blur of sky blue as they patrol or ‘hawk’ the sides of the bushes.

At relaxation we see the blue has the standard virtually as of a plastic toy – uniform and glossy. It alternates down the stomach with brown and black markings to make an indecipherable totem pole.

Their eyes are over-sized and bulbous, taking on just about their complete head and affording 360-degree imaginative and prescient.

Whereas we are able to see three kinds of mild – purple, inexperienced and blue – dragonflies can see 11. And whereas we are able to see at round 60 frames per second, they'll see at round 200, which helps them hunt their prey of midges and mosquitoes.

A male migrant hawker at relaxation on a plant in the course of the day (Image: Alamy)

And one other in full flight. They’ll be about until October, so there’s nonetheless time to be bamboozled (Image: Alamy)

The wings are held open whereas at relaxation and are intricately veined – translucent and patterned like cracked ceramic.

These migrant hawkers shall be on the wing into October, bamboozling anybody who tries to maintain up with their flight as they patrol the hedges, out and in, out and in, among the many blackberries and the sloes.