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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 JULY 2022 11 ALMANAC Nature Notebook 823. Black Pennant With so few freshwater sites, Malta is not exactly rich in dragonflies. These large, familiar insects need streams and ponds where to breed (they lay eggs underwater) and hunt their prey. Since around the turn of the third millennium, however, we have added a good handful of species to the local list of regular dragonflies. One of these relatively new kids on the scene is the black pennant (M. mazzarell iswed). It's easy to tell it from the other dragonflies on account of its diminutive size; the male is also very dark.The reason for the increase in species could well be climate change, but other forces of nature – or combi- nation thereof – cause species to extend their range. Certainly Mal- ta hasn't become any wetter, indeed it has got a good deal drier, so whether the new influx of dragonflies is longterm or temporary, only time will tell. Thank you! We are very excited to announce that the donations collected during the 2022 Earth Garden festival amounted to €9021.95! FoEM is very grateful to the Earth Garden Team for choosing us as the official NGO partner of the festival and encouraging all festival-goers to donate to Friends of the Earth Malta. All donations will go to our crowd-funding campaign for Comino, to restore the Old Bakery site we have been given guardianship of to turn into an environmental interpretation centre! Victor Falzon, Ray Vella www.birdlifemalta.org Green idea of the week 711: Find out more about our Comino plans and donate here https://foemalta.org/comino/ Visit Friends of the Earth's website for more information about our work, as well as information about how to join us. You can also support us by sending us a donation – www.foemalta.org/donate Don't miss this Let Me Be Myself 19 - 25 July Place: Heart of Gozo Museum LET ME BE MYSELF: The Life Story of Anne Frank Il-ĦaĦar Museum, Cultural Centre and Community Space is pleased to host the world- famous Anne Frank Exhibition 'Let Me Be Myself', curated by the Tayar Foundation for Jewish Heritage in Malta in collaboration with Anne Frank House of Amsterdam. The exhibition tells the story of Anne Frank against the background of the persecution of the Jews during World War II. It displays pictures from Anne Frank's childhood in Frankfurt and in Amsterdam. Other historical pictures show the rise of the Nazis and the impact of their racist ideology on the Jewish population of Europe. Give nature a voice. Become a BirdLife member Malta Summer Festival 13 - 21 July Place: Fort St. Elmo Seeking to present opera in an innovative way, the novel festival aims to bolster the genre's visibility, particularly with younger generations. Reflecting the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO)'s momentum in recent years, underlined in Grand Finale, the 20/21 audio-visual end-of- season concert reaching 1million views online, the engagement of internationally acclaimed artists underlines the quality presented in the upcoming MSF (Malta Summer Festival). The star-studded line- up led by Vittorio Grigolo take audiences on musical journeys across some of the most significant operatic repertoire in nights dedicated to celebrating the genre. A GOOD WEEK Good Week/Bad Week A BAD WEEK A Stranger Things stage play is in the works from two leading British theatre figures, while Netflix has also confirmed a spin-off TV series. The play will be "set within the world and mythology of Stranger Things" and be made by director Stephen Daldry and producer Sonia Friedman, Netflix said. Author Joan Lingard, who wrote the Kevin and Sadie series of books for young adults set in 1970s Northern Ireland, has died aged 90. The series included her debut children's novel The Twelfth Day of July, published in 1970, and 1972's Across the Barricades. It will be one of a number of new projects to be overseen by Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers. In a career that spanned seven decades, she wrote almost 60 novels.