Our interest in dragonflies on the reserve is fairly recent - having been kick-started by a visit by a local dragonfly-expert in spring 2011 by way of preparation for a talk that she was giving to the annual open-day. She was able to give us some management tips for dragonflies, and this was one of the driving forces that led to the main pond being dredged out in autumn 2011, as some dragonfly species favour quite a bit of open water.

Our knowledge and experience of dragonflies is still very much at an early stage, but we now monitor activity around the ponds and reserves on a fairly regular basis, and our list of identified species is growing all the time. Fair to say that identifying dragonflies by species is quite a challenge, so it is possible that we may have some other species resident that we haven't yet been able to definitely categorise, but the table below represents our current reserve list.

 

  Cumulative Dragonfly List    
         
  Species Comments Flight Period New in 2012
         
1 Beautiful Demoiselle Metallic blue/green damselfy with copper coloured wings Jun - Aug  
2 Banded Demoiselle Blue damselfly with prominent black patches on wings Jun - Aug 30-May-12
3 Large Red Damselfly Red with some black towards 'tail' end of abdomen May - Aug  
4 Azure Damselfy Blue/Black damselfy Jun - Aug  
5 Blue-tailed Damselfly Black with blue tip near 'tail' end of abdomen Jun - Aug  
6 Migrant Hawker Medium sized. Brown with blue or yellow/green Jul - Oct 31-Aug-12
7 Southern Hawker Large. Green & brown with blue prominent in males. Jul - Sep 28-Aug-12
8 Brown Hawker Large. Brown with some blue in males. Jun - Sep  
9 Emperor Large. Males mainly blue, females mainly green Jun - Aug  
10 Four-spotted Chaser Medium sized, short and dumpy. Jun -Jul  
11 Broad-bodied Chaser Medium sized. Very broad abdomen May - Jul  
12 Black-tailed Skimmer Males blue, females yellow Jun-Jul 29-Jul-12
13 Common Darter Males red, females orange Jul - Oct  

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