A still, warm autumn morning, and ivy in full bloom is cascading over the wall around Auckland park, seething with insects: comma and red admiral butterflies, honeybees and bumblebees, bluebottles, wasps, drone flies and hoverflies.
Does the ancient ivy support the crumbling wall, or vice versa? Its glossy leaves and lime-green flowers hide the stone completely. The inflorescences are spheres of florets, each with a coronet of five stamens tipped with golden pollen, surrounding pools of nectar droplets that glisten in the sunlight. There are no other nearby food sources for nectar drinkers and pollen nibblers: this is their last chance saloon, before winter arrives.
You can hear the hum of insect industry from yards away, but there’s a more alarming sound too, a rattle of larger wings whizzing past my ear: a southern hawker dragonfly. It’s drawn to this concentration of prey, like a sparrowhawk homing in on visitors to a garden bird table. Easy pickings.
These magnificent dragonflies are noted for their inquisitive nature. For a moment it hovers to inspect my face, so I try an old dragon-taming trick, presenting it with the palm of my hand, conspicuously pale in the sunshine. It nearly works. I can feel the downdraught of its wings on my fingers as it almost settles.
But it turns away, patrolling the ivy, catching flies in legs held like a basket under its thorax, then raising prey to its jaws, snacking on the move. Its twisting, turning, darting flight is almost impossible to follow without becoming dizzy, before it finally settles on an ivy leaf. Exquisite wing panels reflect the light like a crinkled cellophane sweet wrapper; a long, needle-shaped abdomen is geometrically patterned with panels of azure and emerald. Completely motionless, it could be a piece of Fabergé enamelled costume jewellery, until it rotates its head like an automaton, 180 degrees clockwise, 180 degrees counterclockwise.
A rattle of wings and it’s away, over the wall. Soon, cold nights will send surviving butterflies, queen bees and wasps into hibernation, some under the waterproof shelter of the wall’s ivy cladding. The dragonfly’s days are numbered, but this encounter leaves an indelible memory that will revive whenever I pass this spot: here be dragons.
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