Scarlet Darters in Dorset 31st July 2024

On a day promising sultry heat and sunshine I decided to make a long car journey to Dorset to see a very rare dragonfly - a Scarlet Darter which is normally and commonly found in southern Europe and throughout Africa.

The first to be recorded in Britain was at Kimbro Pool. on The Lizard, Cornwall on the 7th of August 1995 and subsequently just a very few have been recorded since in various places in Britain.Presumably global warming has had some influence on this expansion northwards.

Over the last week, an unprecedented four to six of this attractive dragonfly have been seen and photographed flying and occasionally settling over and around the shores of a small lake at Knighton Nature Reserve near a place called Crossways which is but a few miles from Dorchester.

I took my time setting off for the reserve knowing the dragonflies would not be active first thing in the morning but would require the sun to provide an optimum level of temperature to stimulate them into activity.I left home at around 8.00am  with an expected arrival at 1030, which for dragonfly viewing would be ideal. The drive on mostly motorways and being on a weekday was predictably taxing with many vehicles ensuring the roads were crowded and busy.

The outside temperature rapidly warmed as I headed south and halfway into my journey I was already resorting to the car's air conditioning to keep the temperature bearable while I drove.

Eventually I turned onto quieter roads which led me to the unprepossessing entrance to the reserve's car park, a wide expanse of unsurfaced flattened earth but refreshingly free of any parking restrictions or fees.

Stepping out of the car the heat immediately confronted me, bringing a hot caress to my face while the sunlight, bright and searing, caused my eyes to involuntarily narrow.

In anticipation of having to wade in water I donned wellingtons, the clumsy footwear feeling hot and sweaty on my legs but otherwise remained in shorts and tee shirt.

A short walk following a narrow passage through gorse and ferns on the other side of the road brought me to a shallow lake where one could walk down to the edge and follow an ill defined track around its marshy circumference.

Half a dozen enthusiasts were already standing sentinel at various points looking out over the lake but it was obvious no one was looking with that intensity and concentration of purpose which would indicate they had a Scarlet Darter under observation.

It takes me a little while to acclimatise to an area that one has not visited before. I like to stand and put the long journey to the back of my mind and then allow my surroundings to insinuate their unique ambience into my sense of being and, once accomplished then set about the process of looking for the purpose of my visit, in this case Scarlet Darters.

The lake was literally teeming with dragonflies and damselflies, a veritable mecca of odonata with hordes of various species cruising rapidly and randomly across and alongside the lake. Black tailed and Keeled Skimmers, Common Darters, Common and Red eyed Damselflies  were everywhere you looked as much rarer dragonflies such as a Lesser Emperor and a fabulous blue Southern Migrant Hawker  came and went.

From the largest Emperor Dragonfly to the smallest Blue tailed Damselfly, they were all here in abundance. Probably the most prolific were the Black tailed Skimmers, many of them mating while Emperor females were audibly rattling their stiff wings against the thin spikes of rush as they bent long green bodies to deposit their eggs in the shallows. 

Looking out at the teeming rush of dragonflies, cruising and dashing about over the lake with such vibrancy there came a brief poignancy as unlike myself there is no time for such insects to enjoy and rejoice in life, as if they could anyway, for as soon as the adults emerge they mate and lay eggs and die all in a matter of days.

It took about twenty minutes after I arrived before a Scarlet Darter was located, settled on a patch of sun burnt grass with a cluster of admirers gathered around it.They beckoned to the rest of us but being some way distant, by the time I got to them, which was only a matter of some seconds, to my immense disappointment it promptly flew off. This was to prove an all too familiar occurrence for the following hour.

Frustrated I walked further around the lake to stand in some welcome shade, the heat of the sun now having settled like a soporific shroud on the land. Not a breath of wind came to alleviate the steadily rising temperature.

Various of my fellow dragonistas were finding Scarlet Darters flying over the lake at random points but one corner of the lake in particular seemed to be favoured more than any other.

Slowly we cottoned on to the fact that the best way of pinning down these elusive insects was to follow them in flight over the lake and hope they would eventually settle somewhere on the shore. Occasionally it worked and at other times it did not.

Various Scarlet Darter 'touch downs' came and went but frustratingly the insect would not remain long before flying off again.It had nothing to do with us getting too close but more with the capricious insect never being content to remain still for more than a  minute at the most, often less. A sudden breath of breeze that shook its perch or the unwelcome attention of another insect or dragonfly would, without fail send it back into the air.

I grew a little dispirited as it became a repeated  'so near yet so far' situation in getting to photo a settled darter. I either had a few seconds at most to get in position to photograph it or it flew before I could focus the camera. A new excitment came as a pair were seen briefly clasped together over the lake and then a female began ovipositing in the lake. Hopefully this will ensure future generations of Scarlet Darters will grow to maturity in the lake and delight visitors in the years to come.

I soon lost sight of the egg laying darter in the dazzle of sunlight.In quieter moments in conversation with other enthusiasts we reckoned we had seen at least three males and one female.

For over an hour or more it was a case of getting close at regular intervals and just occasionally managing to get an image or two but it was hard  work, stressful and more difficult than I had imagined it to be.

Such a colourful insect proved  surprisingly hard to discern on the ground. Relatively small it would be an indistinct darker red outline amongst a myriad of paler dead grass stalks. The ultimate was to get it clinging to a thin spike of reed or dead grass stem. This only happened infrequently but fortuitously I managed to record it when it did.

Approaching noon the heat of the day had become decidedly uncomfortable and I sought relief of sorts by taking shelter in a tree shaded corner by the sun baked track that ran around the lake's edge.I stood enjoying this temporary respite and looked out across the lake more in hope than any expectation of picking up a Scarlet Darter flying around.

Two other enthusiasts were standing to my left, twenty or so metres away and commenced pointing cameras firmly at the track in front of them.This could mean only one thing they had a darter in view and by the looks of it perched on or near to the ground. Ideal.

I made a slow and cautious approach by means of a wide detour around them so as not to flush the dragonfly.Now with the sun behind me I had to first locate it, which after an anxious few seconds I duly did. It was perched with its back to the sun and had raised its body up at an angle. 

Two hours had elapsed since my arrival and now at last a Scarlet Darter was remaining where it had settled a few inches from the ground. It was typically restless but on taking to the wing, on  each occasion did not disappear but returned faithfully every time to its original perch. Four of us took as many images as we wanted as it held its position.It must have been there for at least ten minutes, an eternity of inactivity as far as a Scarlet Darter is concerned.

I had the time to admire its rich scarlet colouring, from head to the very tip of its curiously flattened body.The base of its lower wings were suffused with orange. The stiff gossamer wings covered  by a fretwork of black lines. It twisted its red head, held rigid on a short column from its thorax, to regard something with its huge compound eyes, a slightly unnerving action, performed with a peculiar jerky mechanical like movement before resuming its normal posture.

Seen so close in the camera it was an alien looking creature, a relic from pre-history that over all the millennia has never progressed to achieve any evolutionary refinement to its appearance.

It flew once more but this time there was to be no return. It was gone and with that came an acceptance by most of us that it too was time to depart, content with having seen one or more Scarlet Darters so well.  

There was however one more unexpected treat in store for me. Some years ago I found a female Wasp Spider, which are very strikingly patterned, at Radley in my home county of Oxfordshire and which gave me immense pleasure. Another was there the next year but then I never saw one there again, much to my disappointment.

A chance conversation with one of my fellow dragonfly enthusiasts by the lake elicited the fact that the spiders were relatively common around the lake and in fact so abundant there were concerns their predation on damselflies was getting out of hand. 

A Wasp Spider with its prey - a Common Blue Damselfly

It took me but a few minutes to find my first Wasp Spider and then subsequently another eight! 

If I could have summoned the mental and physical energy to search more thoroughly I am certain I would have found many more spiders.

I made the most of  admiring this attractively coloured spider and can only think that it is more prolific here than in Oxfordshire due to Dorset being so much further south and west. Wasp Spiders are a Mediterranean species that first colonised Britain in 1922, on  the south coast at Rye in East Sussex and are gradually spreading northwards.

So rejoicing at another successful mission I made my weary way back to the car, my wellington boots like lead weights around my feet. The car, having sat in the sun for hours was, on opening the doors an oven on wheels. 

Never was I so glad of a car with the luxury of air conditioning.