Mr older brother (Twitter: @duncanharris5) and I were very lucky to get into dragonflies way back in the early 1980's. At that time very few people that you met in the field were interested in them, which made finding out where different species were a bit more difficult than today. Nevertheless we built up quite a list and photographed most of the UK species at that time (sadly all on tranparencies) including some very rare or restricted species. We had White-faced Darter at Thursley Common (now vanished from this location), Club-tailed Dragonfly on the River Wye and numerous other scarce dragon and damselflies at various places around the southern counties, including Scarce Chaser.
Jump forward thirty years and things have changed considerably. Thankfully many of the once very rare species have now increased their range from the diminutive Southern Damselfly to the aforementioned Scarce Chaser and there are several new additions to the British list too.
I visited a local site last weekend to try and photograph a male Lesser Emperor that I'd seen the week before and which had been found by Steve Waite a couple of weeks previous to that. No luck with that one on this trip but plenty of other species to make it worth the £4.50 entrance fee. All taken with the Nikon P900.
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Scarce Chaser Libellula fulva
At least two or three of these seen. |
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| Blue-tailed Damselfly Ischnura elegans |
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| Emperor Dragonfly Anax imperator, male looking very tatty |
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| Black-tailed Skimmer Orthetrum cancellatum, male |
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| Four-spotted Chaser Libellula quadrimaculata |
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Small Red-eyed Damselfly Erythromma viridulum
First recorded in the UK in 1999, a recent colonist |
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Common Blue Damselfly Enallagma cyathigerum
1000's of these present |
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| White-legged Damselfly Platycnemis pennipes |
