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The doorbell went on Sunday afternoon and on the doorstep was a friend wearing some unusual ornamentation on his jumper - a living broach. He and his family had been walking down the road, when they discovered a huge dragonfly struggling

that wildlife would find it soon enough. And they have.Peering into the now clear water, after the initial algal bloom and water-flea dance auditions, I can see some squat mud-coloured gargoyles resting menacingly just below the water line. They are dragonfly

, using railway sleepers, three high (about 50 cm), to make a raised water body. Triangular in shape, 2 metres long, with a deep corner dug down a further 50 cm and a shallow corner for marginal plants. Three species of damselfly, two species of dragonfly

fences to prevent the geese from trampling some of the newly planted edges. And what's this hawking over the water surface? An emperor dragonfly, Anax imperator. Things are looking up.Maybe the heron will be a regular visitor. Nearby Dulwich Park has a

. Previous clearings of the weed have led to some interesting discoveries.The first signs of dragonfly colonization were revealed in the several large larvae dredged up at once. I had seen the common blue damselfly, Enallagma cyanthigerum, often enough

and dragonflies, with many flying well into October and November, but without that sudden change to wetter weather at the end of September, many late-season insects (and fungi) fail to thrive.This happened a few years ago, when August dry crept into September

, not much helped by examination of dictionaries or spell-checkers. Originally there were hover-flies, snipe-flies, house-flies and blow-flies, which were all flies, and dragonflies and butterflies which were not. Now the hoverfly people use one word along