The county of Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire, showing its major rivers. Click the image to see the full size version

Bedfordshire is one of the smaller counties of England, situated in the south east. Although lacking in natural lakes and large areas of woodland, it supports a variety of habitats well suited to dragonflies and damselflies, collectively this family of insects is called Odonata.

Dragonflies and water go hand in hand and the most significant waterway in Bedfordshire is the River Great Ouse, traversing the north of the county, entering at Turvey at the west and leaving near Wyboston at the east. The River Ivel and River Flit flow through the south east before joining the Great Ouse north of Sandy. The River Lea begins in Bedfordshire, winding in a south easterly direction before leaving the county to become a tributary to the River Thames.

There are a number of lakes in the county, all man-made. Many of them are former clay or gravel pits, some of these provide excellent habitats for Odonata as long as the water has plenty of emergent vegetation and the surrounding area supports enough insect life to feed upon.

Bedfordshire's waters are in the main of good quality, supporting 21 breeding species of dragonflies and damselflies.

Bedfordshire's Odonata

The county has many significant sites of Odonata interest:

Priory Country Park
Felmersham NR
Wyboston Lakes
Sundon Chalk Quarry
And as conservation interest grows, more sites are being developed, such as the Marston Vale Millennium Country Park, this is good news for any nature lover. Many other sites exist, please let me know of your favourites.

In the left hand navigation area you will find links to the dragonflies and damselflies that currently breed within Bedfordshire's borders.

I have included links to proven breeding species, but as migrants do occasionally venture in to darkest Bedfordshire, I will put pages up for those species as they turn up.

Checklist

So far, I've photographed 17 of the 21 species breeding in Bedfordshire, with 4 more to find.

It is more than likely however that Ischnura pumilio - Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly is now extinct in Bedfordshire following the demise of it's only habitat at Sundon Chalk Quarry. it has not been seen since 2003.

I've outlined the list in the table below:

	Scientific Name	English Name
	Calopteryx splendens	Banded Demoiselle
	Lestes sponsa	Emerald Damselfly
	Platycnemis pennipes	White-legged Damselfly
	Pyrrhosoma nymphula	Large Red Damselfly
	Erythromma najas	Red-eyed Damselfly
	Erythromma viridulum	Small Red-eyed Damselfly
	Coenagrion puella	Azure Damselfly
	Enallagma cyathigerum	Common Blue Damselfly
	Ischnura pumilio	Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly
	Ischnura elegans	Blue-tailed Damselfly
	Aeshna mixta	Migrant Hawker
	Aeshna cyanea	Southern Hawker
	Aeshna grandis	Brown Hawker
	Anax imperator	Emperor Dragonfly
	Brachytron pratense	Hairy Dragonfly
	Libellula quadrimaculata	Four-spotted Chaser
	Libellula fulva	Scarce Chaser
	Libellula depressa	Broad-bodied Chaser
	Orthetrum cancellatum	Black-tailed Skimmer
	Sympetrum striolatum	Common Darter
	Sympetrum sanguineum	Ruddy Darter
	Denotes spotted and featured in the galleries

The gallery pages are designed for a screen size of 1024x768 or better. To see the gallery images at their best, your monitor should be calibrated so that all of the cells in the greyscale image below are visible.