Heavy rain has postponed an afternoons damselfly identification course so I thought I’d post a couple of recent records showing what we may have seen! Planning to visit Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre we may well have seen Beautiful Demoiselle (left & below left) and Banded Demoiselle (below right). Geoff Hall photographed this female Beautiful Demoiselle on the River Onny lunching on what looks like a Caddisfly. This demoiselle is ‘browner’ than the ‘greener’ female Banded Demoiselle, has broader wings and the false white pterostigma are positioned further in on the leading edge of the wing than in Banded Demoiselle. They are tricky to separate and the males are far easier; the Beautiful with a fully pigmented dark wing and the Banded with just a band of pigment across the middle of the wing, illustrated clearly by Jan Shields photograph below.
