1^st Sussex Dragonfly sighting of the year competition 2012

It appears to have been a slow start to the year for dragonfly recording, with no adult dragonflies or damselflies being reported so far in 2012... 

The Sussex Dragonfly Group have decided to run a competition this year:  The first person to record a dragonfly or damselfly, in Sussex during 2012 will win a copy of the excellent “Britain's Dragonflies” field guide by Dave Smallshire and Andy Swash (2007 ed).

There are two conditions for winning the prize however:

1. The full details of the record must be submitted via the ‘Odonata Sightings’ box on our ‘Recent Sightings’ webpage.
2. A photograph of the recorded specimen must be uploaded to the ‘Members' Photos’ section of our website (don’t worry, it doesn’t need to be an amazing photo).

The very best of luck to you all!

If you've got a garden and want to encourage more dragonflies and damselflies to visit then download this leaflet which explains some of the easiest ways you can encourage different species into your garden and their basic requirements. It also highlights other ways you can help dragonflies such as avoiding peat based compost – it may not help dragonflies in your local area but will help retain the peat bogs where some of the rarer species live.

Summer Dragonflies at St Leonard’s Forest

Date: Saturday 13th August

Time: 10:00 to 14:30

Location: St Leonard's Forest

Meeting point: Forestry Commission Roosthole Car Park, Hammerpond Road, south end of St Leonard’s Forest nr Manning Heath Golf Club. TQ20812982.

Leader: Ben Rainbow & Mike Funnell

Detail: A trip to search for late hawkers and emeralds amongst heathland, woodland and streams. A great time of year to see a large diversity of British dragonflies, including uncommon heathland species.

Distance: Approximately 6km, mostly flat with a few gradual slopes.

 In the case of inclement weather, please assume the event is cancelled.

Please bring lunch/snacks, drink, binoculars and appropriate outdoor gear.

Beginner's Dragonfly Event at Woods Mill

Date: Sunday 24th July  10.00am to 2.00pm

Location: Woods Mill

Meeting point: Woods Mill car park, next to bridge on to reserve, TQ218138. Please share cars where possible as the car park gets busy!

Leaders: Phil Belden & Penny Green

Detail: Designed with beginners in mind, come along and learn some dragonflies to get you started - it's a great place to learn the basics; there is a lake, stream, woodland and small ponds so we'll hopefully see a good variety. Then we'll go to the classroom to enter all of our records in to the new online dragonfly recording tool, so you can learn how to use it.

Possible Species: Beautiful Demoiselle, Scarce Chaser, Red-eyed and Small Red-eyed Damselfly, Migrant Hawker, Brown Hawker, Downy Emerald, Emperor.                 

Please bring lunch/snacks, drink, binoculars and appropriate outdoor gear.

In the case of inclement weather, please assume the event is cancelled. Call Penny if you’re unsure (07960-388096). 

Our first dragonfly field event of the year is this Sunday coming, 3rd July 2011, hope to see you there....

Lewes Brooks Dragonfly Safari

Date: Sunday 3rd July

Time: 10:15 to 15:00

Location: Lewes Brooks

Meeting point: Starting at Southease Railway Station, TQ430054.

Leader: Phil Belden

Detail: A dragonfly walk which starts from Southease railway station so that you can enjoy a car-free day (although it looks like there's a couple of parking spaces if you need to come by car).

Possible Species: Southern Hawker, Four-spotted Chaser, Hairy Dragonfly, Emerald Damselfly, Variable Damselfly.

In the case of inclement weather, please assume the event is cancelled.

Please bring lunch/snacks, drink, binoculars and appropriate outdoor gear.

The Sussex Dragonfly Group provided activities & a display at the Springwatch event in Stanmer Park, on Sunday.  The event was very popular and we enguaged with hundreds of members of the public.

We had two activities as well as our colourful display, leaflets and DoS books for sale.  Children could make their own dragionflies out of wooden clothespegs, coloured pens & metalic paper for the wings.  This proved a big hit with hundreds being made.  We also had a selection of exuviae in magnifying pots and trays for children and adults to look at.  They found then facinating.  It was a great opportunity to explain how important the aquatic habitats are.

We helped many people identify what dragonfly they have in their own garden, as well as providing them with advice and information on pond creation and management.  We also now have a lot of new Sussex Dragonfly Group members!

Highlights:

• Children running around with their newly created dragonflies acting out areal dogfights
• A family coming back again to show us their photos if a female Emperor ovipositing in one of the Stanmer Ponds
• One little girl being was so attached to the Emperor exuviae pot she almost refused to be parted with it!

The Open Air Laboratories (OPAL for short) have set up a new survey scheme investigating the quality of water bodies around the UK.

If you haven't heard of OPAL before it's a five year project, set up by a variety of partnership organisations, that aims to create and inspire a new generation of nature-lovers by getting people to explore, study, enjoy and protect their local environment.

They're asking for help to monitor water bodies around the UK and provide people with simple packs that will allow them to identify important indicator species - such as dragonfly larvae and selected adult Odonata. If you want to take part, simply go to their website: http://www.opalexplorenature.org/?q=WaterSurvey and print out the relevant information packs.

The Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre (SxBRC) is proud to announce that in 2009 it exported just under 60,000 Sussex Dragonfly records to the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Gateway.  This was the first dataset to be sent to the NBN Gateway from the SxBRC due to its being a good clean dataset, verified by John Luck, the County Dragonfly Recorder at the time.  It is a huge milestone for the group and has led the way for other groups.

The National Biodiversity Network (NBN) describes the Gateway as “an innovative website which acts as a “data warehouse” for biodiversity information, and can be quickly and easily accessed to understand the distribution of particular species in the UK.  Individual records can be displayed on a map of the UK in a number of different ways.”

The British Dragonfly Society - Sussex Group and the SxBRC have decided that the Sussex dragonfly data will be shown at a 1km resolution and that full details of the records will only be available on request; the user will thus be able to see a map of what data is available for Sussex and then they know that they can come to us for more information.  This way we are not compromising the integrity of the dataset, information on any rare or protected species, or losing track of who has used the data.  By sharing this data we will be adding a missing part of the jigsaw on a national level, so that population trends and distributions can be seen much clearer throughout the UK.  If you would like to see the Sussex Dragonfly dataset then visit the NBN Website www.nbn.org.uk  and go to the “NBN Gateway” tab.  It’s worth a visit - you can look for individual species, search through the datasets that are available, or even pull up all records for a particular site.  Simply type in the species you would like to see a map for, e.g.  emperor dragonfly, and when it comes up with the results click on ‘Grid map of the distribution of Anax imperator’ and you can then pick the location and play around with the changeable settings.  You can also use the ‘interactive map’ for which there is a link near the top of the page, so you can view where the data has come from, zoom in, and see this information against different boundaries including SSSIs and other designated sites.  This is an excellent tool for highlighting gaps in our data, perhaps this dragonfly season you could explore new or under-recorded areas?

Penny Green

 John Luck was out with a group of National Trust staff surveying the boggy pools on their reserve at Black Down in July when one of the wardens spotted a very small damselfly.  John couldn’t believe what the warden had found – a small red damselfly.  This is a scarce heathland bog-dwelling species which has only one other recorded site in West Sussex and a couple more in East Sussex.  It is a national rarity which can be found on pools and streams with sphagnum moss on lowland heathland.  Its stronghold in Sussex is the Ashdown Forest, especially at the SWT Reserve, Old Lodge.  We would encourage recorders to keep their eyes peeled if visiting any of the other western heathlands, such as Marley and Linchmere Commons during its flight period of early June to September.  Let us know if you see any.

The scarce chaser was recorded in great numbers at Barcombe Mills on the Ouse last year, but despite many visits in 2009 there was a mysterious lack of them.  John Luck thinks that this could be because most of the sightings in 2008 were near to a weir and they could have been washed down-stream and this is something that he will investigate in 2010.

Emerald dragonflies are under-recorded, due to their secretive behaviour.  When you are lucky enough to see one it rarely settles (when it does it’s usually high up in a tree!), and normally whizzes past too quickly to see any diagnostic features to identify which species it is.  The brilliant emerald is a national rarity and is found only in parts of the south east and the Scottish Highlands; the downy emerald has a scattered distribution in the UK with a stronghold in the south east, both species occupy similar locations.  They also favour the same type of habitat, mildly acidic lakes and ponds surrounded by woods and slow streams and rivers with overhanging trees and bushes.  The brilliant emerald has a yellow ‘nose’ but this is hard to see in flight, so as Dave Chelmick recommends,  try to take some photos, even if they’re blurry you can hopefully still see the yellow.  The two species have different flight patterns too.  If you’d like to learn more about these species then please contact me for a copy of the BDS Sussex Group’s Autumn Newsletter which looks at the key identification features of these two species.  We’d be grateful if recorders could invest a bit of time in to recording these species in 2010 - we’d love to hear from you if you see any.  The High Weald is a particularly fruitful area in which to concentrate your search.

Penny Green

One of our most successful field events ever was held at Warnham Nature Reserve and Southwater Country Park on 14^th June.  Hosted by Sam Bayley, the Reserves’ Countryside Warden, we were treated to a great day out in the field with perfect dragonfly weather – sunny, no wind and the odd cloud here and there to encourage them to settle every now and again.  Twenty three people attended and we enjoyed 17 species of dragonfly and damselfly, with highlights including excellent views of an emerald dragonfly, but which one?  Although initially no-one was prepared to commit to which species of emerald this was, it soon became apparent that it was a brilliant emerald as it kindly patrolled along in front of us showing off its yellow ‘nose’, a distinguishing feature.  We were also treated to all three species of chaser (scarce chaser, broad-bodied chaser and four-spotted chaser) close to each other so we could learn to tell them apart from one another.  Sam kindly gave us access to a brick pit at Southwater Quarry where we were delighted to see a spectacular number of white-legged dragonflies, or ‘flying matchsticks’ as they are sometimes called.  We estimated that there must have been over 800 present.

A visit to a private nature reserve near Isfield proved to be another excellent day out for the group, with 25 people turning out, including the landowner, and a total of 15 species were recorded on the day.  Highlights included early small red-eyed damselflies, and the grizzly sight of an emperor dragonfly eating a mating pair of black-tailed skimmers.  It was a privilege for those people that went along to have access to this private nature reserve, which has been created on a farm.

Usually we’re pretty lucky with the weather on our field trips, but the first attempt at Black Down on 1^st August was scuppered by downpours, although four brave people turned up they only saw one emerging southern hawker.  But ever-optimistic John Luck decided to go for it and run another trip the following weekend.  Four different people turned up and were rewarded for their effort, as this is a beautiful nature reserve well worth a visit.  Highlights included three golden-ringed dragonflies at ‘Discovery Pool’ where small red damselfly had been found the previous month.  Eight species were seen in total.

If you would like to become a member of the British Dragonfly Society - Sussex Group then please contact me: pennygreen@sussexwt.org.uk   It’s free of charge and you’ll receive two excellent newsletters a year, and the chance to attend our field trips.  Please send your dragonfly records to the same email address, they will be gratefully received.

Penny Green