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Dragonflies in Leicestershire and Rutland, 2004
2004 began with lots of hard work over the long dark winter nights as Helen Ikin and I toiled away to enter all the historic odonata data for VC 55 (Leicestershire and Rutland) onto ‘Mapmate’. This work is now complete and we have over 14,500 records on our database, dating back to 1887. The ‘tidying up’ of anomalous records and rationalising of site data is, however, set to continue for some time to come. We are now able to produce up-to-date distribution maps of all species and these should be posted onto the Leicestershire and Rutland Dragonfly Group website (www.lrdg.org.uk) prior to the 2005 flight season. The website continues from grow from strength-to-strength and we remain indebted to Richard Fray who maintains it from a remote location in sunny Arizona, U.S.A! The most exciting events of 2004 happened early in the year, as it became obvious that Hairy Dragonfly was making its presence felt in VC 55 in a big way. Prior to 2004 there were just twelve records of this species. On 25th April 2004 a resident of Oadby, just to the south of Leicester City, found six dragonfly exuvia in his 2 m x 4 m suburban garden pool. Amazingly the exuvia proved to belong to Hairy Dragonfly and represented the first proven breeding in the County! Between 25th April and 16th May 2004 at least 16 Hairy Dragonflies emerged from the pool, which is located several kilometres away from any site that would be considered remotely suitable for breeding. Over the next two months reports were received from a further three sites, with the most significant being the Grantham Canal. Breeding was also confirmed at this site and the species proved relatively easy to observe, for the first time ever, at a number of locations between Barkestone and the Lincolnshire border. On the 8th June 2004 there were records of no fewer than nine individuals, at a number of localities, an occurrence clearly unprecedented in VC 55. In recent weeks of the L&RDG has learnt that British Waterways are proposing to bring the Grantham Canal back to navigable status. This is clearly a very worrying development as the Grantham Canal is certainly VC 55’s prime odonata location (Variable Damselfly occurs nowhere else) and such a project would, without doubt, diminish the value of the site. Developments will be closely monitored and I would urge anyone with an interest in the Grantham Canal to voice their opinions to British Waterways. The only record of a confirmed migrant species was of a male Lesser Emperor at Priory Water on 1st to 7th August 2004; this is a particularly unusual coincidence as the same species was present at the same site in 2003. A number of records of Ruddy Darters on the north-western river systems apparently related to migrants, however, at least of a local nature. This year extensive survey work was carried out on the odonata present on the river systems in the north west of the County. The most interesting revelation was the presence of Red-eyed Damselfly along most of the length of the River Soar between Loughborough and it’s confluence with the River Trent. Banded Demoiselle was also recorded in ever 1 km Ordnance Survey Grid Square surveyed on both the Rivers Soar and Trent. The distribution map below also shows how the picture of the distribution of Banded Demoiselle has been further clarified; its presence was confirmed on every 1 km grid square of the River Mease, River Sence, River Anker and Gilwiskaw Brook. Note that solid dots represent records from 2000 to 2004 and unshaded dots represent pre-2000 records. Hopefully the addition of distribution maps to the L&RDG website will stimulate further recording in 2005 and I sincerely hope to be able to report similar advances in our knowledge of the populations of odonata in VC 55 this time next year.
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