I found a female Common Darter in Buckland Warren this morning.
David Hastings
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| Common Darter ♀ © David Hastings |
A blog for sightings of Dragonflies and Damselflies in Oxfordshire. To submit records and photos for posting, just email stephen_burchemail at yahoo.co.uk. Photos with resolutions up to 1600 pixels horizontally may be provided. These will be displayed at a resolution of 640 pixels but viewers can then click to see them at full resolution
Thursday, 13 November 2025
Saturday, 8 November 2025
Lockinge Brook, 8 November
By "mini-weir" where footpath crosses brook SU426877
1-2 Common Darter
Stephen Burch
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| Common Darter close-up [focus-stacked] © Stephen Burch |
Tuesday, 4 November 2025
Steeple Aston - Southern Hawker emergences 2020-2025
Showing continued remarkable dedication, Deborah Dunn has now completed six years of daily monitoring of Southern Hawker emergences and exuviae at her small garden pond.
The plot below shows weekly exuviae counts for the six years 2020-2025. Feedback from Deborah suggests that the lower totals in 2020 and 2021 can probably be attributed to shorter monitoring periods.
For the years with full monitoring periods (2022-2025), the overall annual totals showed remarkable consistency, year on year, from 2022-2024.
However this year only 20 exuviae were recorded, which was only 34% of the average for 2022-2024 (58) .
This large drop is in line with comments from several other observers that 2025 has been a poor year for dragonfly numbers at many Oxfordshire sites. This poor showing is even more surprising given the seemingly ideal weather for prolonged periods - seemingly almost too good for dragonflies!
It will be interesting to learn if this reduction in numbers is reflected on a national scale and what explanations are proposed for it.
Let us hope that activity picks up next year and returns to more normal levels.
Any comments from others on numbers of dragonflies seen this year, compared with recent previous years would be very welcome.
Stephen Burch
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| Weekly exuviae counts from a small garden pond in Steeple Aston for 2020 - 2025 |
Sunday, 2 November 2025
Standlake Common 2nd November
At the gate to Langley Lane hide.
A male Common Darter was sunning itself on the new railings.
David Hastings
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| Common Darter ♂ © David Hastings |