Dragonflies, butterflies and young birds – it is July at Lackford Lakes

It is the middle of summer at the lakes and there is lots to be found and seen around the reserve. Dragonflies and butterflies are particularly good during these months, so it is a great time to spend time watching them feeding wherever you go. Young birds are beginning to get obvious from small birds like long-tailed tits in the shrubs to the grebes on our lakes.

Dragonflies / Damselflies

July is when dragonflies really get going at Lackford. This past week I have seen emperor dragonfly, southern hawker, black-tailed skimmer and brown hawker. These can be found anywhere on the reserve. The centre pool is good for watch the emperor dragonfly as these keep close to water and just keep patrolling back and forward around the lakes. Black-tailed skimmers are best watching around the waters edge from one of our viewpoints – try Bernard’s and Bess’s. Southern and Brown hawker can turn up anywhere so keep watching wherever you go. I was watching these hunting over the reeds from the viewing platform this week.

Along with the dragonflies, it is always worth looking at their smaller cousins, the damselflies. These are found in similar spots to dragonflies and are often in various shades of blue and black depending upon the species. Look out for common and azure damselflies wherever you go. Red-eyed and blue-tailed damselflies are found near the waters edge.

Butterflies

Summer is a great time of year for watching butterflies. Currently bramble bushes are in flower around the trails and are great places to get close to these amazing creatures. In recent weeks, we have started to see more and more of the butterflies that come out in summer with plenty of meadow browns and ringlets now flying around. The skippers have started making appearances too – large, small and essex skippers. As the summer goes on we should start getting more flowers coming out next to the trails and these attract the bigger colourful butterflies like painted lady, red admiral, peacock and small tortoiseshell.

Other insects

Lackford is great for lots of different insects from bees to crickets so spend some time watching these and if you want them identified, take and photo. Then visit the mini marquee by the café / shop entrance to use the books there to identify these creatures.

Binoculars

For all these butterflies, dragonflies and other insects, I recommend using a pair of binoculars to get closer views. Binoculars are not just for birds, it is for anything you want to look closer at. If you don’t have binoculars then you can hire some for £3 when you next visit.

Young birds

The eastern lakes are the best end of the reserve for looking for young birds on the reserve. On these lakes, we have young little grebes, young great crested grebes and some young common terns. As you walk there, listen out for small birds feeding in the shrubs and trees – lots of warblers can be found there and mixed feeding groups of tits like long-tailed tits.

In the centre, you can watch our young swifts in the cameras – they are now almost a month old and should be getting ready to fledge towards the end of July.

Yesterday, we started to see our first young marsh harriers beginning to attempt flying as they chase their parents for food. These ones were the ones from the viewing platform we are still waiting to see anything from the Double Decker hide.

Kingfishers

This year has been a bit of a strange one for Kingfishers at the lakes. We continue to get odd sighting from around the reserve but they seem to be favouring areas away from the hides and we are not seeing many young yet, so this seems to point at a poor start from the breeding season. They can have three attempts are breeding and the attempts later in the year tend to be more successful.

In the past week we have sightings from Paul’s, Double Decker and Steggall’s so keep looking.

Recent sightings

Please add your sightings to our book in the centre before you leave the reserve. These help build up a picture of what is around.