Surreybirder
Ken Noble
I saw this dragonfly today in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. But I do not know what it is.
I think it's a southern hawker but better wait for the experts.
I saw this dragonfly today in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. But I do not know what it is.
I think it's a southern hawker but better wait for the experts.
Just perusing the Latest Sightings on the British Dragonfly Society page when I noticed a claim of a female Yellow-winged Darter rescued from blanketweed in a water filled planter in Redbridge, London.
I've noticed in the last couple of years some clearly inaccurate reports & wonder if anybody knows anything about this record?
I'm rather sceptical!
Just perusing the Latest Sightings on the British Dragonfly Society page when I noticed a claim of a female Yellow-winged Darter rescued from blanketweed in a water filled planter in Redbridge, London.
I've noticed in the last couple of years some clearly inaccurate reports & wonder if anybody knows anything about this record?
I'm rather sceptical!
I wondered what that was really. Brown Hawker? Teneral Darter spp?
I wondered what that was really. Brown Hawker? Teneral Darter spp?
I'm pretty sure the BDS doesn't have the resources to check through the sightings that get put on the latest sightings on their website - best viewed as a vehicle to encourage interaction and interest in dragonflies but not a scientific record
I was about to say that a lot of things had been early this year, but then I checked back and saw the date was in May. Not that earlyI find people are about as good at pattern matching dragonflies as I am at matching diptera - almost 100% failure rate
I saw the attached message on the local birding system - the observer didn't have the background knowledge that Willow Emeralds don't fly until July nor that it would be a first for VC11. I didn't bother to pursue it but I thought that female Banded Demoiselle would have been the most likely. (Not knocking the observer)
Fairly amazed no record of Willow Em in VC11. We’ve had them in Beds for several years - thought they’d got all over by now, though I suppose they do have a more eastern distribution and Beds is (a bit) east compared to Hants. Edit: and of course they started out from Suffolk, and Beds is a lot nearer Suffolk.
The thing I find most frustrating about the new(ish) BDS reports format is not so much the ‘in my garden’ records, because it’s good to see people getting interested and involved, but that when you reload the site, though the records are in date order, often within date they seem to come up in completely random order, which means you need to check through a few records to see if there’s anything new, and if you find one new record you have to keep looking to make sure there are no more. Their database needs a timestamp for date and time posted as well as a date-of-record date, and then for records to be displayed in date-of-record followed by time-posted so that once you start seeing stuff you’ve seen before you only need to look for the next date-of-record.
Hope that’s clear, it probably isn’t
In any event, it’s still a useful site for checking what’s flying and where.
1m and a conjoined pair of Lesser Emperors at Deep Lake in Chichester Gravel Pits today - first I've ever seen here! In the SE of the lake easily viewable from main footpath. Also c50 Small Red-eyed Damsels mating away in a mass damsel orgy and 2 Brown Hawkers too. Nice!
View attachment 734273 View attachment 734274