The Wildfowl & Wetland Trust’s only Scottish site is also a Dragonfly Hotspot. The charity celebrates all things dragonfly every summer with a Dragonfly Festival, which aims to increase awareness and interest in these fascinating winged creatures.
It’s been a wonderful year for me, I started out as a dragonfly wildlife novice at the start of the season. By the end of summer, I am now able to identify a host of species that I hadn’t known existed, all by working in the middle of a dragonfly oasis. I’ve become accustomed to walking in the midst of darter territories, following Emperor Dragonflies, and hunting for my favourite, the Banded Demoiselle, along the Lochar Water, the river that runs through the site.
I kicked off the season with my first-ever transect and learned from one of our Reserve Wardens some brilliant tips on how to identify and count these often tiny or super-fast invertebrates. From there, my fascination for dragonflies and damselflies has only intensified.
As part of our annual Dragonfly Festival, we hosted an exclusive art exhibition for photographer Andrew Fusek-Peters, who is an expert at dragonfly photography. His series of Black Darter images were proudly displayed in our courtyard, showing some of the wonderful habitats, colours, and details of this elusive species.
Our site manager, David Pickett, with the support of local dragonfly experts Barbara Mearns and Mike Abbs, was lucky enough to identify a new species for the reserve, the Red-veined Darter. As well as the Black-tailed Skimmer, which was the second record for this species on site. These are both very rare visitors to the Scottish Solway coastline, brought up this far north because of heatwaves over the last few months. Excitingly, the Black-tailed Skimmers were seen mating, so fingers crossed for more in the future!
Recent work on the reserve has helped to increase the population of dragonflies here, in particular, the additional ponds and scrapes created as part of the Wilder, Wetter Caerlaverock project. It was in these new scrapes that the Red-veined Darter and Black-tailed Skimmer were found, underlining how significant and effective our work has been.
We’ve really cemented our place here in the dragonfly world, with extensive and increasing dragonfly populations across the reserve. It is an honour to be able to share our diverse array of dragonfly and damselfly life with the world, and I cannot wait for next summer to come around. Who knows what wonderful species may join us at WWT Caerlaverock next year!
By Georgia Pope, Engagement Officer
This article has also been published by the British Dragonfly Society.
