Last Tuesday, though I didn’t realise it until later in the day, I finally saw a stationary Lesser emperor dragonfly (Anax parthenope). My previous encounters with this dragon have been when I’ve seen one, usually fleetingly and at distance, hawking over a body of water. These stunning (ha!) flight shots of the Lesser emperor were taken at Cosmeston’s west lake on 16 August 2023 and looking over the River Ely at Grangemoor Park on 25 July 2025, where I only just managed to catch the dragon before it exited, frame right.

The British Dragonfly Society website reports that this dragonfly was first reported in the UK, in Gloucestershire, in 1996, and first recorded breeding in Cornwall in 1999. I don’t know whether the specimens we see here in south Wales are dragons that have bred here or migrants but I suspect the Lesser emperor I saw last Tuesday was a migrant as I found it at Lavernock Nature Reserve, just a few metres from the sea cliff edge. And, though there is a pond at Lavernock, it routinely dries up during the summer – and certainly did in this year’s drought, so the dragonfly is unlikely to have bred at the reserve.

As I admitted in my opening sentence, I didn’t initially recognise this dragon. ‘It’s just another Migrant hawker’, I thought to myself, and, as it was perched in some scrub and partially obscured by the vegetation, it was difficult to see and photograph. Now, I’m just glad I did take photos or I’d never have realised what I’d seen, nor been able to prove it.