Christmas reading

Enjoying one of my Christmas presents, the latest in a famous natural history book series. Of course it’s an excellent book but I was amused by the suggestion that, for dragonflies, your garden pond needs to be 1.5 m deep ‘so that it does not freeze to the bottom’. This is one deep pond – perhaps for English people it’s a bit clearer quite how deep this is if you translate it to feet: its nearly five feet deep – which is up to my chin!

Also tickled by the repetition of the myth that you should avoid trees because they may ‘add leaves to the pond during autumn which may reduce the oxygen available to the larvae as the leaves decompose’.  I’ve discussed that earlier in this blog.

Interestingly just yesterday in my Christmas Day pond dip the Broad-bodied Chaser dragonfly larva was in the leaves at the bottom of the pond.

But no need to be too smug because at least they got their book finished! Some of us are still a bit behind.