NEW Garden Dragonflies Summer Video Guides

We’ve teamed up with super talented video editor and self-confessed ‘dragonfly obsessed’ Laura from the Wildlife Garden Project to make another set of video guides. Earlier in the year, we worked together to produce a guide to garden dragonflies in the spring and now we’ve followed this up with a summer version. Our video guides…

Exbury Gardens Recognised With Dragonfly Hotspot Status

Call for more garden wildlife ponds as Exbury Gardens recognised with ‘Dragonfly Hotspot’ status Exbury Gardens in the New Forest has joined an important national network of wildlife hotspots for dragonflies, and will now be encouraging visitors to attract the insects into their own back gardens. The south coast visitor attraction has been designated a…

UK Wildlife Podcast Dragonfly Takeover

Did you know that there is an excellent podcast all about UK wildlife? One half of the Podcast duo is our Essex County Dragonfly Recorder, Neil Phillips, so dragonflies get their fair share of airtime. In the latest episode, Neil invited two of our team members on to chat all things dragonfly as it was…

Dragonflies of Durham

Find out how Dragonflies are fairing across Wildlife Trust sites in Durham; Michael Coates, Durham County Dragonfly Recorder, reports on the recording effort and and results on WT nature reserves. Overall 20 species were seen, an impressive total for a northern county, with Rainton Meadows producing the most species sighted: a total of 16 over the…

Smallford Pits update: no charges from Crown Prosecution Service

Last month, staff and volunteers at the BDS were outraged to learn about the apparent deliberate poisoning of ponds at one of Hertfordshire’s top dragonfly sites: Smallford Pits (read here). This criminal act followed a previous incident in September 2020 during which the ponds were trashed with heavy machinery. Smallford Pits is a designated Local Wildlife…

Meet Cephalozygoptera! The newly described, and sadly extinct, Odonata suborder

Researchers from Simon Fraser University, Canada, announced the classification of a new suborder of extinct Odonata after conducting an extensive review of fossil specimens and scientific papers dating back as far as 162 years. Within the historic studies they found descriptions of specimens that matched fossils collected from British Columbia and Washington State. On first…

Top Hertfordshire Dragonfly Site Criminally Destroyed

Police and the Environment Agency are currently investigating the destruction of two protected ponds at Smallford Pits Local Wildlife Site near Saint Albans. Local residents were left aghast after discovering that the ponds at their treasured wildlife hotspot had been polluted, with either diesel or petrol, in December 2020. Earlier in September, of the same…