Cors Erddreiniog

I had a day out in Anglesey today at a site I last went to on a training course 14 years ago! It isn't a particularly renowned bird reserve, but it is known for its insects, and that's what we were after, in particular dragonflies and damselflies.  I had to drop number 1 son off at the airport at 05:00 so had the opportunity for an early start, beating the traffic. I picked Rob (the dragonfly expert) up just after 06:00 and we made good time along the M56 into North Wales, and once past Chester it was easy going all the way.  There isn't much 'on road' parking in the Village of Capel Coch but thankfully there is a small car park just on the north edge of the village, about 200m from the entrance to Cors Erddreiniog. This is a site with multiple designations, including Site of Special Scientific Interest, Special Area of Conservation, Ramsar Site and National Nature Reserve. There are a range of habitats, including fen, phramites reedbed, heath, woodland and plenty small pools and ditches.

Considering it was a day for insects more than birds, the weather was certainly on side. Bright sun, no wind and hot!

Twenty one species of dragon & damselflies have been recorded on the site and as soon as we got to the end of the hedge lined track we were treated to numbers of both. The site holds a couple of specialities - the two we really wanted to see were Southern and Scarce Blue-tailed Damselflies - plus some species that are difficult if not impossible to see locally (for me anyway) - Golden Ringed Dragonfly, Hairy Dragonfly, White-faced Darter and Keeled Skimmer the most difficult.

Straight away we had a Southern Damselfly and numbers of Four-spotted Chasers. Next were Variable and Azure Damseflies and then we thought we'd dropped lucky with a Blue-tailed Damselfly that did a great impression of a Scarce Blue-tailed and had us going for a few minutes.

We carried on around the site, stopping frequently wherever there was a pond, scrape or ditch. To be honest the dry weather has taken its toll, some ponds had already dried up, and wet scrapes were fewer than I would have liked. However, we found a cracking spot at the end of one of the ditches where we had Hairy Dragonfly, Emperor, Keeled Skimmer, Broad-bodied Chaser and Black-tailed Skimmer.

Keeled Skimmer

At another spot, closer to the woodland edge we had our best views of Southern Hawker and Golden-ringed Dragonfly. We'd seen both of these distantly on several occasions and the site must hold excellent numbers of both.

After mooching around for a while we returned to the edge of the ditch where we'd seen most activity. It was here we managed to see our main 'want' for the day and a 'tick' for us both, Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly. It took some time to actually confirm it as a Scarce, not just a Blue-tailed, but after a good 15 - 20 minutes of observation, we were both happy we had seen the rarer of the two species.

Birds were plentiful but nothing special - mainly Meadow Pipits, Reed Warblers, Reed Buntings and Sedge Warblers. A few Redpolls were flirting around, a pair of Stonechats were nice to see, and a single Buzzard provided raptor interest. Surprisingly for a site with so many 'meadow' or 'rushy pasture' areas there were very few butterfly species. We had plenty Meadow Browns but other than that only a couple of Small Heaths and a couple of Small Skippers. Very, very poor.

Small Heath

I did learn some valuable photography lessons though- namely its very easy to over expose in bright sunlight, especially when shooting species with light coloured abdomens or underwings!!!