Devil's darning needle

Experimenting with my son's macro lens while walking the dog and picking blackberries along steep muddy paths wasn't the best idea but I was fortunate enough to encounter this golden-ringed dragonfly, Cordulegaster boltoni. It landed among the bracken and brambles and remained motionless for minutes, allowing me the opportunity to train the lens upon it - but macro photograph is so tricky! The depth of field being so shallow you can't get everything in focus.

A couple of weeks ago Englishman in Bandung, whose consummate insect photography I follow with awe, offered some valuable advice on achieving successful macro images. He suggested concentrating on getting at least a portion of the subject razor-sharp to give the illusion of complete clarity of the whole image, and if possible to get the eyes in focus. But the sun was strong so I couldn't see the screen properly and what emerged most sharply were the wings. (I think you need to go LARGE to see their tensile filigree structure to best advantage.)

This dragonfly is native to the western and northern parts of Britain where it chooses peaty, acidic mountain streams to lay its eggs. It's a strong flyer with a wing span of 10 cm. and is an active predator upon other insects, including beetle, bumblebees and wasps. I think this specimen is a male since it appears to have claspers rather than an ovipositor at the end of its abdomen.
The colloquial term 'devil's darning needle' derives from the unsettling early European belief that anyone who fell asleep in the open air, perhaps beside a gently trickling stream on a sunny hillside, risked getting their eyes and other parts sewn up by one of these insects.
The long and slender shape of the insect's body, combined with the superstitious belief that it, like the fly-consort of Beelzebub-was in league with the darkest of forces, produced a myth durable enough to make the journey with the colonists to the United States. Today in Iowa, a recent book* asserts, "devil's darning needles sew together the fingers or toes of a person who falls asleep...in Kansas, they may sew up the mouths of scolding women, saucy children...and profane men."
In 1889 lessons at a school in New York City were brought to a halt by the entrance of a dragonfly.
An alarm raised by one scholar passed through the entire room: "A devil's darning needle! A devil's darning needle!" The ominous phrase, piped in the shrill quaver of terrified childhood, alarmed the teacher, and the agitation became so general that the school had to be dismissed as an act of humanity.

* A Dazzle of Dragonflies by Mitchell and Lasswell, 2005. Excerpts via The Science Essayist.