Didcot, 11 May

Dida Gardens:

Black-tailed Skimmer 1
Four-spotted Chaser 1

Private site in north of the town:

2 Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly (two aurantiaca females)

Ian Lewington 

Black-tailed Skimmer (c) Ian Lewington 

Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly (c) Ian Lewington 

Radley Lakes, 11 May

Orchard Lake:

Four-spotted Chaser, 1
Hairy Dragonfly, at least 3
Downy Emerald , at least 3
Red-eyed Damselfly, 4+
Azure Damselfly, numerous, many ovipositing
Common Blue Damselfly, several

Thames Path near Orchard Lake

Banded Demoiselle Damselfly, numerous
Blue-tailed Damselfly, 3

Phil Cruse

Four-spotted Chaser © Phil Cruse

Azure Damselflies © Phil Cruse

Letcombe Valley BBOWT, 11 May

Pond near northern entrance SU377860:

Large Red Damselfly 1
Azure Damselfly - c 10
Four-spotted Chaser 1 briefly

Stephen Burch

Radley Lakes, 10 May

Thrupp and Orchard Lakes:

Downy Emerald 3 -Orchard Lake . 
Four-spotted Chaser 1
Common Blue Damselflies (100s almost all teneral)
Azure Damselflies c. 40 
Blue-tailed Damselfly - small numbers
Red-eyed Damselfly - small numbers
Large Red Damselfly 1

Brian Walker

Downy Emerald © Brian Walker

Downy Emerald © Brian Walker

Otmoor, Roman Road, 7 May

2 Broad-bodied Chaser
100s Blue Damselfly sp.

James Wainscoat 

Broad-bodied Chaser (c) James Wainscoat 

Wallingford, 7 May

SU61068734

1 Clubtail 

Daniel Elger, per iRecord/iNaturalist

Cholsey Marsh 9 May

Clubtail 3 (probably 4)
Hairy Dragonfly  1
Beautiful Demoiselle 6
Banded Demoiselle 50
Azure Damselfly 10

Ian Lewington

Clubtail (c) Ian Lewington

Clubtail (c) Ian Lewington

Beautiful Demoiselle (c) Ian Lewington

Radley Lakes, 7 May

15+ Banded Demoiselle
3 Large Red Damsels
15+ Red Eyed Damsels
30+ Common Blue Damsels
10+ Azure Damsels
1 Variable Damselfly (female blue form) Barton Pool
1 Four-Spotted Chaser
1 Clubtail  at SU5133196959. Also 2 exuviae found on vegetation at edge of river SU5248596929.
5 Hairy Dragonflies ( 3 Barton pool, 1 Orchard Lake, 1 Bullfield Lake)

Wayne Bull

Variable Damselfly (female blue form) (c) Wayne Bull

River Thames near Goring, 7 May

Clubtail: 1 exuvia at bend in river about 200m west of railway bridge 

Alan Holmes, per iRecord 

Goring Railway Bridge, 7 May

Clubtail 9 exuviae 1 emergent, 3 emerging on reeds rest on parapet.

Alan Holmes, per iRecord 

Cholsey Marsh - 7th May

 

Hairy Hawker, male

Clubtail, fem came up from river bank at 11:06 and flew high
Beautiful Demoiselle, 3 fem
Banded Demoiselle, numerous

Goring Railway Bridge, 2 May

Clubtails: 2 emergents and 3 (separate) exuviae.

Stephen Harley, per iRecord

Days Lock Scrape, 2 May

2 Clubtails
3 Downy Emeralds
8 Hairy Dragonfly 

Geoff Wyatt, per iRecord

Lamb's Pool BBOWT, 6 May

 2 Large Red Damselfly (teneral)

Mark Hunter 

Large Red Damselfly (c) Mark Hunter

Alan Dawson

I am shocked and saddened to hear that Alan Dawson, who many of you may have known, died suddenly and unexpectedly just after Easter. 

For several years now Alan was one of the most prolific contributors to this Blog with records and superb photos from the Cholsey area, especially Cholsey Meadows. I met him several times over the past few years and he was always full of enthusiasm. He really put Cholsey on the odonata map of Oxfordshire and was very adept at finding Clubtails at just this time of year along the Thames path at Cholsey, mostly between Ferry Lane downstream to the bridge.

Alan's sharp eyes and extensive time in the field led to many notable records from Cholsey Meadows and other nearby sites. These included a wandering Southern Migrant Hawker (once!) and more regular Small Red-eyed Damselflies, both Willow Emerald Damselfly and Emerald Damselfly as well as many more common species.

He will be sorely missed.

RIP Alan.

Stephen Burch 

Shenington, 27 and 29 April

 Large Red Damselfly:

1 on 27/4 in garden

3 on 29/4 at private site to west of village

Mark Hunter

Large Red Damselflies (c) Mark Hunter

Letcombe Valley BBOWT reserve, 2 May

Pond near the northern entrance:

2+ Large Red Damselfly

1 blue damselfly sp.

Stephen Burch

Wallingford, Winterbrook Bridge, 2 May

3 Clubtail exuviae (where not seen before)

Michael Pocock

Radley Lakes, 2 May

8 Banded Demoiselle
20+ Common blue damsels
3 Azure damsels
4 Hairy dragonflies (2 orchard lake, 2 Barton pool)
1 Downy Emerald (Bullfield lake)

Wayne Bull

Clattercote Reservoir, 2 May

Blue damselfly sp 1m
Blue-tailed damselfly 2
Hairy Dragonfly 4m, 1f ovipositing- all at western end

Steve Holliday Gill Holliday Gareth Blockley

Hairy Dragonfly ovipositing (c) Gill Holliday 

Cholsey Marsh - 2nd May

Clubtail, newly emerged male drying off in the sun from 10:30 to 11:06 at the usual hotspot

Banded Demoiselles along the Thames path

Aston, 1st May

Pair of Large Red Damselflies in cop in the garden today, before the female (with male in tandem) began ovipositing in the pond. Also another teneral LRD and an immature female Broad-bodied Chaser.

David Hastings

Large Red Damselflies © David Hastings

Dry Sandford Pit, 1st May

Southern Damselfly : 1♂ (immature)

Broad-bodied Chaser : 1♀ (immature)

David Hastings

Broad-bodied Chaser © David Hastings

Southern Damselfly © David Hastings

River Thames downstream from Clifton Hampden, 1 May

SU5595

20+ Banded Demoiselle
10+ Red-eyed Damselfly
1 Hairy Dragonfly
1 Chaser sp,

+no sign of any Clubtails!

Stephen Burch

Hairy Dragonfly © Stephen Burch

Orchard Lake, Radley Lakes, 30 April

 2 Common Blue Damselflies (males)
1 Banded Demoiselle (male)
3 Hairy Dragonflies, including a pair ‘in cop’.

Phil Cruse

Hairy Dragonflies in cop. © Phil Cruse

Banded Demoiselle © Phil Cruse

Radley Lakes, 30 April

3 Banded demoiselle (2m1f)
20+ Common blue Damselfly
7 Azure Damselfly (4m 3f)
4 Red eyed Damselfly
2-3 Hairy Dragonflies 1 Orchard lake, 1-2 near Barton pool

Wayne Bull

Azure Damselfly © Wayne Bull

Banded Demoiselle © Wayne Bull

Hairy Dragonfly © Wayne Bull

Goring, 29 April

2-5 adult Clubtails at SU602795 (about 200m upstream of the railway bridge). Also 2-5 larvae and 2-5 emergents reported! Emergence under the railway bridge also reported.
Banded Demoiselle

Steve Cham, Alan Holmes;, Jon Van Gowler, Nick Percival per iRecord

Radley Lakes, 28th April

11 Common Blue Damselfly (7 males 4 females)
1 Blue Tailed Damselfly 
1 Red Eyed Damselfly 

Wayne Bull

Common Blue Damselfly (teneral) © Wayne Bull

Blue-tailed Damselfly © Wayne Bull

Red-eyed Damselfly (teneral) © Wayne Bull

29th April

Cholsey Marsh

Banded Demoiselle : 3♂ 1♀

Aston Upthorpe Downs

Large Red Damselfly : 1♂ (immature).

David Hastings

Banded Demoiselle © David Hastings

Central Oxford 28th April 2025

A Large Red Damselfly sighting in my garden in the Jericho area of Oxford this afternoon.

 

Aston, 28th April

My first odonate of the year today - a teneral Large Red Damselfly which had probably emerged from my garden pond in Aston, west Oxon.

David  Hastings

Large Red Damselfly © David Hastings

John Radcliffe Hospital, 17 April

Garden pond. SP540074

1 Large Red Damselfly 

Tess Wright

Banbury, 15 April

 2 Large Red Damselflies in a Banbury garden. SP465375.

Wayne Bull

The 2025 season is up and running!

Large Red Damselfly © Wayne Bull

Whitecross Green Wood information now added

Many thanks to David Hastings for drafting an entry for Whitecross Green Wood, one of the best sites for Odonata in the county.

To see this, click here.

Anyone else with further suggestions for sites to add?

Stephen Burch

New and updated information on Sites

I'm pleased to announce that information on four new sites in the Banbury area has recently been added to the Site information that can be found on the tabs near the top of this page (below the photo and bold text). 

Thanks very much to Steve & Gill Holliday and Gareth Blockley for summarising so well their available information on these sites:

Lamb’s Pool and Woodford Bottom BBOWT reserve
Wroxton College Lakes 
Clattercote Reservoir 
Grimsbury Reservoir and Upper Cherwell Valley, Banbury

In addition to the above sites, the text for the other sites has been reviewed and updated where necessary. 

Please let me know of any errors or omissions.

If anyone has a favourite site they would like to see included, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Not long to the start of the 2025 season now! 

Stephen Burch

County Dragonfly Recorder for Oxfordshire

2024 Highlights

Here is a summary of the main Odonata highlights for 2024 for the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire, which includes a large section of Vice County (VC) 22 (old Berks) to the south and a small section of VC24 to the north (Whitecross Green Wood).

The weather for the 2024 dragonfly season was generally disappointing for much of the time, with fine sunny days at a premium. Numbers of the commoner species appeared well down, but there were still some notable highlights for some of the rarer species. 

Unlike its exceptional showing in 2023, 2024 was more average for Clubtail sightings, with 18 records between 9 May and 2 June. Most were from the traditional area of Cholsey and Goring, with a notable count of 11 exuviae from downstream of Gatehampton Railway Bridge.  There were also reports from the upstream section of the Thames at Chimney Meadows, Shifford and Tadpole Bridge, where this species is seen less often. 

Clubtail (c) Alan Dawson

There was a better showing for Variable Damselfly, with 6 records. Most were from the usual Barton Fields area near Abingdon but two were from a site northwest of Oxford (Dukes Pond) - an area from which there have been intermittent reports previously. 

Variable Damselfly © Ian Lewington

There were 26 records of Downy Emerald from nine sites (well up on the four sites last year), with the highest count being 8 at Rousham Lake. 

Scarce Blue-tailed Damselflies were again reported from stormwater ponds at Longford Park, Banbury and Didcot (including a new pond to the north of the town). A single record from Grove, near Wantage belatedly came to light – a new location for this rare species. 

Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly (aurantiaca female form) © Ian Lewington

Emerald Damselfly records were similar to last year, with reports of small numbers from just nine sites scattered across the county, with the exception of high numbers found at a new pond in Whitecross Green Wood.

Emerald Damselfly [focus stacked] © Stephen Burch

Summer saw the first county record of Norfolk Hawker on Otmoor, a much anticipated new arrival., given its spread westwards from East Anglia. Lets hope this wasn't just a one off, and more records follow - almost certainly on Otmoor.

First Norfolk Hawker for Oxon © Jeremy Dexter

There was an unprecedented increase in sightings of Lesser Emperor. Hitherto, this had been a very rare species, recorded less than annually. However this year there was an early report of an immature at Eynsham, away from any potential breeding sites. This was then followed by over 30 reports from a further eleven sites, with breeding behaviour being widely noted. The peak count was seven at Tar Lakes. What will 2025 hold for this species? 

Lesser Emperor at Tar Lakes © Stephen Burch

Another new arrival, Southern Migrant Hawker, continued to consolidate its presence on Otmoor, with more reports than previously from all over the reserve area, especially around the Pill. Smaller numbers were also seen at nearby Whitecross Green Wood and there was an isolated record of one from the Pinkhill reserve at Farmoor reservoir.

Southern Migrant Hawker © Ian Lewington

The comprehensive Cothill BBOWT transect surveys for Southern Damselflies and Keeled Skimmer showed a continuous slow decline in peak counts at Dry Sandford Pit (despite the restrictions on access) but more stable numbers at nearby Parsonage Moor. Unlike last year, there were a few reports of Small Red Damselfly (peak count of 5) at Parsonage Moor.

Small Red Damselfly © Wayne Bull

Small Red-eyed Damselfly numbers were well down at several sites presumably due to the poor weather.  However, the late season Willow Emerald Damselfly appeared more robust, with a continued spread. There were over fifty reports from almost thirty sites, with several sightings into October. 

Willow Emerald Damselfly © David Hastings

Over the year as a whole, in iRecord there were over 3000 records of 31 species – both figures being records..  

Record of Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly in Grove, June 2024

A remarkable record of a Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly has belatedly come to light while I was looking through iRecord entries for VC22 (Berkshire) for last year. It was on 6 June 2024, from a location in Grove, near Wantage, given as SU398902. 

[Note that Vice County 22 includes the large section of what has been Oxfordshire ever since the re-organisation of county boundaries in 1974 - everywhere to the right of the River Thames, looking downstream].

The photos (for one see below) appear to confirm the identity, and look as though they were taken in the observer's garden! Unfortunately there is no valid observer name nor contact details for this record. 

If by any chance the observer reads this post, I'd be delighted to hear from him/her!

Grove is some distance from Didcot, the only other known location for this rare species in southern Oxfordshire, and even further from the other sites in Banbury. 

In Oxon, this species is currently usually found only at stormwater ponds, so it is possible there is a breeding colony nearby, yet to be discovered. Something to bear in mind in June this year!

Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly in Grove, 6 June 2024

Steeple Aston - Southern Hawker emergences 2020-2024

Showing remarkable dedication, Deborah Dunn has now completed five years of daily monitoring of Southern Hawker emergences and exuviae at her small garden pond. 

The plot below shows weekly exuviae counts for the five years 2020-2024. Feedback from Deborah suggests that the lower totals in 2020 and 2021 can probably be attributed to shorter monitoring periods. 

Since 2022, the overall annual totals have shown remarkable consistency, year on year, only varying by 4 (7%), and the mean dates for the exuviae varied by only a week. The poor weather in 2024 may have led to the mean exuviae date (19 July) being about a week later than for 2022 and 2023. 

It is also notable that in 2024 Deborah recorded 18 emergences - her highest total so far. 

Weekly exuviae counts from a small garden pond in Steeple Aston for 2020 - 2024

Cholsey Meadows and Lollingdon, 11 November

Good numbers of Common Darters present

Alan Dawson, per Cholsey Wildlife

Lockinge, 12 November

No activity observed in a reasonable sunny spell. 

Stephen Burch 

Balscote Quarry BOS reserve 31 October

Common Darter 18 including  7 pairs (5 in cop, 2 in tandem) although no sign of ovipositing

Steve Holliday 

Lockinge, 27 October

Some activity in a brief sunny spell early afternoon in the pool just upstream from weir SU426877:   

1 Migrant Hawker
4 Common Darter, inc 1 pair in cop & ovipositing 

Stephen Burch

Aston 24th October

A female Common Darter spent some time sunning itself on my garden fence in Aston this morning. It also sat on my finger for a while.

David Hastings    

Common Darter © David Hastings

Lockinge, 22 October

Pool by weir SU425877:

1 Willow Emerald Damselfly - on fence

First site record!

Stephen Burch 

Willow Emerald Damselfly (mobile phone photo) © Stephen Burch

Oxford, 19 October

Oxford Botanic Garden

Common Darter 1
Southern Hawker  1 

University Parks, Oxford

Willow Emerald Damselfly 1+ male 
Southern Hawker 1f ovipositing

Jake Dudderidge

Willow Emerald Damselfly © Jake Dudderidge

Common Darter © Jake Dudderidge

Southern Hawker © Jake Dudderidge

Lockinge, 19 October

 Pool by weir SU425877:

1 Migrant Hawker
1 Common Darter - on fence

Stephen Burch

Farmoor: Pinkhill/Shrike Meadow & River Thames, 17 October

Common Darter 12 (m/f)
Willow Emerald Damselfly 5, including 2 tandem pairs 
Migrant Hawker  1 (m)

Tim & Ali Baker

Migrant Hawker © Tim & Ali Baker

Willow Emerald Damselflies tandem pair © Tim & Ali Baker

Common Darter © Tim & Ali Baker