As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, on Monday I took the train to north Cardiff in search of a special creature, and it seems effort and patience do have their rewards, as I finally found my first ever Willow emerald damselfly (Chalcolestes viridis). Why did I mention effort and patience? Well, this was the fourth time I’d gone searching. The first time involved a two-hour three-train trip to Yate, in south Gloucestershire, because the few sites for this damselfly in south Wales were inaccessible to me as a non-driver. Unfortunately, despite help from a local expert who’d seen as many as ten the previous day, we couldn’t find any Willow emeralds at the only site in Yate. Fortunately, just a few days after that trip, a couple of people found these damselflies for the first time at two locations in north Cardiff. Unfortunately, despite a couple of hours looking each time, my first two searches around Roath Park Lake didn’t produce any Willow emeralds. Fortunately, this past Monday my perseverance paid off and I finally found a single specimen, though, unfortunately, it was high up on the shady side of an Alder tree and disappeared almost immediately after I got the very poor photograph shown here.

Just for some background, the Willow emerald damselfly, also known as the Western willow spreadwing due to its habit of perching with wings outspread, only arrived in Britain in 2009. Since then it has colonised suitable habitat as far north as Yorkshire and, in August 2025, the first specimens were found in Wales (the report of the first sighting, found and written by Monmouthshire county recorder Steve Preddy, is an interesting read). I’m going to keep searching for more of these beauties as I want to learn more about this damselfly’s habits, and to see if I can find it in a new site, and to get better photos. If – no, let’s be positive – when I do manage to get better images, I’ll blog again about this exciting new Welsh resident.