This week’s posts will all be about flying creatures, the latest flying creatures to grace our skies, the most recent species of odonata and lepidoptera to begin their short lives, much to my everlasting delight (not, I hasten to add, my delight in the fact that they have short lives but, rather, that I and so many others and many of you can delight in sharing the air with these stunning creatures). I’ve already written about my first odonata species of 2026, the Large red damselflies that featured in my post published on 25 April, First damsels of 2026. Today, I present my first large dragonfly of the year, a surprise Broad-bodied chaser (Libellula depressa) that flitted out from the hedgerow I was passing on 22 April, a much earlier sighting that in previous years.