The longer you sit still, the more wildlife you see. What a good excuse for a lot of sitting, doing nothing. Which is exactly what one should be doing on a hot, sunny July afternoon. Even the breeze was warm, and although it was strong enough to lift the edges of the water lily leaves out of the water and fold them over, it offered no cooling respite. Sitting in the shade did, though, and my reward for idle patience was the sight of a male Emperor dragonfly patrolling his beat above the pond waters. Its colouring is unmistakeable, a bright turquoise blue abdomen and equally bright green thorax. In flight, the abdomen is held curved, as opposed to the straight carriage of the main hawker dragonfly family. He was hunting above the waters, covering about 50 metres in length before returning to his starting point.

Six huge carp were sunbathing with backs and dorsal fins clear of the water. Mouths gaping, it must have been galling for the anglers who threw out their bread-baited lines in vain. A shoal of roach rose to the sunlit water's surface. Their backs looked black from above, but their sides flashed silver and their orange fins almost red as the sunlight caught their twisting and turning. They too seemed to be enjoying a lazy "sit" in the sun, one even stood on its head, tail fins just below the pond surface. More energetic were schools of fish fry, eyes disproportionately big, which is probably very important to a tiny, newly hatched fish, prey to everything else in the water. They swam jerkily into the shallows, darting this way and that, all moving in unison, like iron filings pulled by a magnet.

The roach disappeared beneath the lily pads, the carp floated - you couldn't call it swimming - to the other side of the pond. Shallow margins further along the bank received the fry, while the Emperor dragonfly flew behind a stand of bright yellow greater spearwort. I just sat some more, because sitting doing nothing is the best way to see wildlife.