My encounter with mother nature

These photo's were taken in January 2006 well we were on holiday on the west coast of the South Island, New Zealand.
I was showing my brother the local sights , not far from Hokitika.
We were busy gold panning at the time, when i told my brother about the large dragonflies the zoom around the riverbeds snatching insects for dinner. I never thought one would land on a tree not more than 3 meters from where I was panning. I slowly walked up to it. I noticed it was preoccupied chewing on its dinner, a bug it must of just caught. I reached out my hand and I managed to get it to sit on my finger!!!
Wow it was pretty impressive. Fantastic little flying beast, wing span was about 120mm.
It sat quite happliy for about 5 minutes before zooming off back on the hunt for more insects.
A real highlight that day , we even found a few specks of gold.............