Previous week's Wednesday marked the end of my vacation in Barycz Valley Landscape Park. For the context of this article it is only important that the area contains a lot of fish ponds. It means canals with slow flow connecting large bodies of still water. Those are ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. But where there is a lot of prey, there are also predators. One type are dragonflies.
Those large insects are highly effective in their hunts. Unlike f.e. ladybugs, that have high kill rate, because they eat barely moving aphids, so instead of hunting they are just dining, dragonflies catch their meals in flight. And they can fly very fast, for long distances, they are also very agile and maneuverable. It gives them over 95% kill rate.
Personally I find them very hard to photograph. Even if they stop mid-air to scan the environment, they move quickly afterwards. And when they sit, it is usually near water and away from reach. Even if they somehow get close, they are easily spooked. While I was on vacation walking in forests and around ponds, I've seen many dragonflies, in some places there were swarms of them, and thanks to that mosquitoes were not actually that much of a problem. But I've not managed to take photos of any at all, let alone closeup photos.
So... on Wednesday as I was driving home, I've made last stop in palace-and-park complex in Żmigród. I'll get to the description later. First let's visit a nature monument, large pedunculate oak named "Melchior". 220cm in diameter. Beautiful tree.
The weather forecast said about rain, clouds and cold, but as usual with forecasts only cold actually became reality, and even that only in shadow. Maybe because of cold, on sunny side of the oak a large dragonfly was warming up. At first I've approached carefully, taking photos from afar to not scare it away. But later I started to get closer and closer, as the insect seemed to not mind me at all. It gave me great opportunity to take a lot of photos from different angles. I'm uploading them in original 4000x3000 (hopefully image hoster won't mess with that) - click on links below for full resolution.
Based on size and colors it is probably male Aeshna Cyanea. Its shape and colors scream "performance" and "high power-to-weight ratio". It is as if Honda or Yamaha designed Personal Flying Vehicle, with carbon nanotubes, titanium and some robust composites in bright colors for "look at me!" effect.
While it wouldn't make actual sense to build it like that, even if we had the materials, I'm a fan of the idea of such flying contraptions, presented in many Ghibli productions or in Dune :o)
As for the palace-and-park complex itself, the "palace" is just preserved ruins. The only building standing is the donjon. For a symbolic fee you can get in and climb to the top, but while it looks tall from the outside, the surrounding trees are even taller, so the view is rather meh.
It looks kinda like a face with window for an eye and long nose/trunk reaching below mouth :o)
Oh, and there is human-sized metal dragon.
The park is more interesting, with many cigartrees, white pines with their pleasantly soft needles, black walnut (sadly all nuts that already fell to the ground were picked up clean - damn you other people, doing what I would do...), tulip tree and other exotic trees, finally extra tall aspens, larches and most commonly oaks, often wrapped in ivy.
There is also a pond hosting some ducks with a fountain in the center. The wind was helpful in spreading the droplets to form nice rainbow.
