Weeding heather is backbreaking, often hot, and stumbling through five-foot high bushes is one which some of us avoid until returning to the seasonal change of mowing rides in the autumn!

And yet... there are compensations. We have now decided that when we have a good complement of volunteers we could afford to break the routine and do something else during our half-day. The heather looks and smells magnificent in the flowering season in August - and sometimes there is a happy break when a bit of wildlife happens by.

You could be forgiven if you thought that a broad-bodied chaser is a bearded biker on a Harley Davidson, but it is actually a dragonfly of which we see many on the heather.

In this case it was sitting on a heather bush poised to dart after its prey. But after we crowded around it did not move. I think it was somewhat chilled by the drizzley, coolish weather.

Wider in the beam than most dragonflies it was beautifully marked with yellow scallops on its body and breathtaking gossamer wings which, close to its body, became a yellowy-brown shade. All of us were transfixed by it. Better than any photograph.

It was one of the "darters" as opposed to the expressively-named "hawkers" which patrol sections of air catching their prey. However, nature often sets out to confuse your average human, so there are some dragonflies which both dart and hawk!

I chalked up this experience as one of so many of pleasures on the reserve over the years – like the dormouse, the glow-worm, the tiny red pins of a lichen, freeing bramble-bound guelder roses, and watching the antics of new baby woodpeckers.

John Hall © 2005