Latest Leics & Rutland Dragonfly Sightings

As the season seems to be over at Priory Water we are now begining to process all the Odonata records for this year.

We can now confirm that we too paid host to at least 4 male Red-Veined Darters. The first sighting was made in mid-June and these continued until early August. The insects were incredibly elusive and wary and best viewed through binoculars, we did get a few images between us but alas all were taken from great distance and although they are good enough to confirm ID they are only of record quality.

Attached to this post is possibly the best image we have taken by Graham Gamble on July 2nd.

As Adey Baker had already mentioned, we had been wondering whether the origin of the RVD's at Huncote may have been the Huncote Sandpits. Our hunch was that they may have come from the new extension. This would mean that they could navigate to the rough field corner in Huncote by following the Thurlaston Brook.

Well our hunch paid off and we found three Red-veined Darters at this private site. The sandpit looks perfect for the breeding location for the first generation individuals, so this would make a good theory for the appearance of these colourful insects - especially as we have now seen c12 individuals around Huncote. We checked other areas of the sandpits, but found no RVD's. Three RVD's were still in the rough field corner near the entrance to the Croft Quarry nature walk at the Huncote end.

Carl Baggott, Adey Baker

Despite recent bad weather Odonata numbers are still good for October. The following species were recorded on the reserve this afternoon.

Migrant Hawker - 50+
Brown Hawker - 1 very late, battered old male
Common Darter - 250+, coupled pairs and ovipositing were recorded.
Common Blue Damselfly - 30+
Blue-Tailed Damselfly - 2, my latest sighting ever of this species!

From the British Dragonlfy Society website:

The first confirmed record of Migrant Hawker for Northern Ireland came from Lough Money, Co Down, on Sept 15th.

The third UK record (and second this year) of Southern Migrant Hawker (Mediterranean Hawker) came from Little Wootton Inclosure in the New Forest on August 5th.

Red-veined Darters are everywhere! And in amazing numbers at some sites - for example, 200+ at Filey Dams in E Yorks!

Yellow-winged Darters are also evident, with recent sightings in Oxfordshire, Essex, Lancashire and Staffordshire. Clearly both these rare darter species have been emerging locally rather than (or as well as) migrating from the continent.

Small Red-eyed Damselflies continue their march northwards - as well as the record from Notts (at the Grantham Canal, as reported here in August - that's one site to add to the Leics SRED list next season) they are now being seen as far north as Yorkshire.

Red-veined Darter 3 still present (2 males, 1 female) in the field-corner, though the site was water-logged on Sunday Oct. 1st after overnight rain. We're beginning to wonder how long it will be before the males turn into 'adult' red colour. (just testing out the new format!)

Adey Baker, Carl Baggott

As some of you have probably realized, I am trying to make the LRDG website as "automatic" as possible with the intention of FINALLY handing the running of the site over to someone who at least lives in Britain! I first said I was going to give it up about three years ago....

So the next part of this process is the uploading of latest photos. The blog (this page and all those in the recent archive section) can handle this quite adequately and it will be very simple for our regular bloggers to use.

[if you haven't signed up and would like to contribute your own news and photos, please contact me using the link at the top of the page]

HERE'S WHAT YOU WILL DO:

1. Log in to Blogger.com and click on Create Post, as normal.
2. Type your message as normal.
3. Place the cursor in the position you'd like to add the image - it doesn't matter if it's at the top, the bottom or in the middle.
4. Click on Add Image (the blue icon towards the right end of the various options)
5. Under "Add an image from your computer" you will see a browse button - click on this and then navigate to the file you'd like to upload from your computer.
6. (Alternatively, you can add an image that's already uploaded onto the web by using the browse button on the right. For the purposes of the latest sightings page it is unlikely you will need to do this however)
7. Next, choose a layout. You will see that the above photo is aligned to the right, whereas the top photo is aligned to the left. Your choice...
8. Choose an image size - I'd recommend small images as this is just for the thumbnail and will not affect the quality of the final image
9. Click Upload Image
10. You will now see the image within your post. If you're not happy with its positioning, simply drag it to your preferred position. Add more images by repeating this process as required.
11. You can resize the thumbnails - I would advise this (ie: making them smaller) if you are uploading several thumbnails in one message. To do this, click on the image and simply drag one of the corner sliders inwards. Do NOT resize using the sliders along the sides of the images as this will not resize the image proportionately.
12. Once you are happy with your post, click Publish Post

One of the great things about blogger is that you can go back and alter your posts at a later time. I'd recommend posting the news straight away and adding the photos later if there is going to be a delay whilst you edit them. You will notice I have started to add images to previous posts - you are welcome to do the same. (NOTE: you will only be able to edit your own posts - rest assured that I am the only person who can access all posts as the site's administrator)

Once the post has been published, you will see (as with this post) that when you click on the thumbnails you will get a full size image on the screen, just like before.

Captions - you should include a caption in the post to indicate the species in the photos (and who took them if it's not the poster)

RULES:

The only rule I would ask people to abide by relates to file size - please only upload *optimized images of around 150K maximum. This is not a hard and fast limit but significantly larger files will take up too much disk space and increase load times.

*Don't know how to create optimized images? Contact me (link at top of page) and I will talk you through the process. It is very straightforward using a program like Photoshop.

IF ANYONE HAS ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH. AS WITH THE BLOG AT FIRST, ONE OR TWO OF YOU MAY BE A LITTLE WARY. I CAN ASSURE YOU IT IS JUST AS EASY AND USER FREINDLY AS ANYTHING ELSE ON THE BLOG, SO YOU WILL HAVE NO PROBLEMS. BUT PLEASE, CONTACT ME FOR REASSURANCE AND MORE HELP IF YOU NEED IT.