
Sundial spotlight
Kingfisher
Kingfishers (Alcedo atthis) are small bright blue and orange birds which can be spotted near slow-moving or still water. They fly rapidly and low over water, like darting jewels, occasionally hovering just above the surface, and hunt fish or aquatic insects from riverside perches.
These small birds are widespread, especially in central and southern England. Kingfishers breed in their first year, and pairs are usually formed in February. Both male and female birds excavate the nest burrow into the stone-free sandy soil of low stream banks.
Kingfishers are short lived and many fledglings don’t survive for more than a couple of weeks because they haven’t learned to fish for themselves before being driven out of the parents’ territory. Territories typically cover at least 1km of water but may extend over 5km.
According to the ancient Greeks, kingfishers built their nests on a raft of fish-bones and then floated them on the sea, where they laid and incubated their eggs. To allow this, it was said that the gods always calmed the winds and sea immediately after the winter solstice. The Greek name for kingfisher is halcyon which is where we get the term ‘halcyon days’.
Kingfishers feature in the poems of John Clare, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Andrew Marvell, who describes the impression of ‘sapphire-winged mist’ created by a kingfisher in flight.
Dragonfly
Dragonflies are insects in the sub-order Anisoptera (‘unequal-winged’).
In the UK and Ireland there are about 30 species of dragonflies while there are more than 5,000 worldwide.
Dragonflies have a large and robust body, hind wings which are usually shorter and broader than the forewings, and large eyes which usually touch at the top of the head. They were some of the first winged insects to evolve, some 300 million years ago, and fossil dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to 60 cm. Modern dragonflies have wingspans of only 5–12 cm but some species can reach speeds of up to 36 km per hour.
In the larval stage, which can last up to 2 years, dragonflies are aquatic and eat just about anything — tadpoles, mosquitoes, fish, other insect larvae and even each other. At the end of its larval stage, the dragonfly crawls out of the water and its exoskeleton cracks open and releases the insect’s and wings. Some adult dragonflies live for only a few weeks while others live up to a year.
Dragonflies have incredible vision which enables them to see at almost every angle except right behind them. They are expert fliers and catch their prey on the wing.

You can tell dragonflies and damselflies apart by the way they hold their wings: damselflies hold their wings closed when they land, while dragonflies hold theirs open, at right-angles to their body.
In England, dragonflies are sometimes known as the ‘devil’s darning needle’ or ‘horse stinger’ while in south Wales people called them ‘adder’s servant’. Despite this association with the devil, in Norse mythology dragonflies are linked with Freya, the goddess of love, war and fertility.
Common reed
The common, river or water reed (Phragmites australis) occurs along the margins of lakes, fens, marshes, and streams from the Arctic to the tropics. It is a broad-leafed grass, up to 5 metres tall, with feathery flower clusters and stiff, hollow, smooth stems. The flowers are dark purple, but slowly fade to brown.

Reeds grow from creeping rhizomes and flower from August to October. They form extensive, yellow-brown reed beds in wetlands across the UK. In some areas they are cut for thatching.
The Druids and the Celts revered reeds for their everyday usefulness. Dried reed stems have been used for thousands of years as building material, in basketry, for arrows and pens, and in musical instruments. They are also harvested for their cellulose content.
Greek mythology describes how a nymph called Syrinx was being pursued by the god Pan when she plunged into a river and changed herself into a reed. Because he couldn’t tell which reed represented her, Pan pulled out a bundle of reeds and tied them together into a set of pipes.