An encounter with an emperor and he was as impressive a being as you will find anywhere. Very large, and bright blue – an impression of something really rather improbable, flying along a stream as though he owned the place, mainly because he does. Highly territorial, these emperors.

This was an emperor dragonfly. Four inches long and four wings whirring in a controlled blur of motion: stop, start, accelerate – a master of his own airways. The dragonfly is a wonderfully designed creature: big, tough, manoeuvrable with a bodyplan that’s been working well for 350 million years. There is even an extinct species with a two-ft wingspan.

I can never see a big dragonfly without thoughts of their impossible antiquity, and of the monster dragonflies that haunted the coal swamps of the Carboniferous Period. They even look like aeronauts of the past, like biplanes. The dragonfly is the Sopwith Camel or the Tiger Moth of the insect world.

But this is a design that works as well as it ever did: dramatic, impressive, sometime seriously alarming creatures, with old names such as horse stinger and Devil’s riding horse. The Norfolk hawker dragonfly has recently been promoted as a Biodiversity Action Plan species: the rising sea levels are a not-so-very long-term threat to its heartland habitat on the Northern Broads and the Suffolk Coast. The solution is the creation of wetland sites inland of threatened areas: which is big stuff.

Shocking news: Britain’s a wet country

British summers weren’t always as wet as this year’s, but some were worse. 1912 was the wettest and dullest on record

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Britain has lost three dragonfly species since the war: the dainty damselfly, the Norfolk dragonfly and the orange-spotted emerald. And alas, the current flooding is bad news for dragonflies as much as it is for human beings: the larvae get washed out of their homes at the bottom of ponds and can’t survive.

Dragonflies, visible, bright and prone to dramatic aerial displays, are vivid creatures: the more so for being slightly sinister, so much a product of the deep past. But they are strong and viable in today’s world – so long as human beings don’t mess it up for them, of course.

Dragonflies are not cuddly, though. That’s why the organisations that support invertebrate life struggle for recognition and public support and why I am always ready to trumpet the cause of Buglife. More than ever before, the emperor needs the backing of the people.

The sudden unexpected outbreaks of sun in this dismal summer are a pleasure to be seized at once, whether or not you are human. The brief and thrilling passages of warmth and light bring out butterflies in fluttering battalions: and I have seen one comma after another, always a favourite butterfly of mine: orange and black on top, turning into a near-black dead leaf when its wings are closed, and with a ragged edge to the wings that is unmistakable. A plethora of commas? A punctuation of commas? I think as a gesture to my old friend Lynne, I should call them a truss of commas.

Do you know what those patio heaters you sit under in your T-shirt drinking cold beer while the world freezes are best for? Attracting mosquitoes. I learnt this from Matt Shardlow, of Buglife. The devices emit carbon dioxide, and if there’s one thing a mosquito homes in on, it’s carbon dioxide. So if you want to give them a hand, get a patio heater. You’ll soon be slapping yourself like a Bavarian folk dancer.

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