Quad

After a moderately successful visit to Lower Moor in Wiltshire last Monday, I thought I'd wait a few days to let the dragons really get going before making another trip down the Fosse. It turns out though that I needn't have left it so long: according to several people I spoke to today, the mass emergence of Downy Emeralds and Four-spotted Chasers began there on Tuesday. 

Luckily there were plenty of emergent dragons left for me, especially at the corner of Mallard Lake, where photographers were standing shoulder to shoulder. There were a few failures - Downy Emeralds seem especially prone to choosing their eclosure supports badly and damaging their soft and fragile wings - but nearly all the emergers I saw today eventually made it away safely into the trees. Every time another one fluttered upwards I felt a little frisson of emotion, and had to suppress the urge to cheer them on.

Despite the amount of time I spent photographing the very fresh dragons and damsels at the lake, I knew even as I pressed the shutter button that this image of a slightly older female Four-spotted Chaser was likely to be my favourite of the day. I took it in the birch wood to the north of the pathway that habitués of the reserve call Dragon Alley, where I'd gone in search of mature Downy Emeralds. I found some of those, and even saw a pair flying in cop (though I failed to get them in the viewfinder), but there were also Hairy Dragonflies and Broad-bodied and Four-spotted Chasers, along with hundreds of mature, semi-mature, and teneral damselflies. In fact I saw many more dragons flying in this small area of woodland than over the lakes, which suggests that most of them are still in the maturation phase when they feed up and build their strength and speed, and aren't yet ready to breed.

When I got home and started compiling today's records, I glanced back through my spreadsheet to check how the Odonata season is going so far, compared with the same point in each of the past few years. The result was startling. Up to and including 2nd May, the total number of species I've logged has been as follows:

2019 - 0 (first record 15th May)
2020 - 1
2021 - 0 (first record 9th May)
2022 - 1
2023 - 1
2024 - 1
2025 - 11.

It's pretty clear that this unprecedentedly early start to the dragon season is due to the bizarrely warm April we've just experienced. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the season plays out.