Dragonfly Pond - September 2024
If you’ve been to the reserve in recent weeks, you will no doubt have noticed the clearance work around the Dragonfly Pond is you leave the path from the Visitors’ Centre.
Although it can look a bit jarring, this is an important little snapshot of some of the work which goes into maintaining a successful reserve.
Succession is the process by which nature reclaims a space left to its own devices. It starts with algae and mosses, giving way to saplings and pioneer trees like Alder and Willow. These pave the way for larger, slower growing trees like Sycamore and Oak.
It starts very slowly at first, but when conditions are right, you can see a huge boom in some of the earlier species in the chain. Without keeping these in check, they reach a great height very quickly. In the autumn when trees lose their leaves, pond margins can start to creep in towards the centre of ponds, causing them to reduce in size.
Wetlands are the cornerstones of biological diversity. Many insect species need bodies of water in order to breed, and dragonflies are no exception. They identify ponds by sight, relying on reflected polarised light to spot them from a distance. When ponds start to reduce in size, they become less obvious and less attractive to the insects and larger wildlife that rely on them.
This year the Dragonfly Pond had actually reduced in visible surface area by about a third. The logs around the edge couldn’t be seen at all, and despite early emergence of Southern Hawkers in June, not a single pair was seen breeding around the pond in weeks. The day after thinning the pond plants, the Southern Hawkers returned and were seen egg-laying. Since the perimeter work took place we’ve had a full month of daily sightings. We’re currently enjoying the largest numbers of Hawkers seen around the Discovery Trail in years. That’s not a coincidence.
How the Dragonfly Pond looked in July 2024. Green and vibrant but shrinking and overlooked
Every so often, we must maintain the ponds to make sure that we don’t lose them through in-fill and over vegetation. In case of the Dragonfly Pond this can look quite severe. However, it’s worth noting that the pond is only five years old. In that time it has been populated by at least 17 species of damselfly and dragonfly, as well as newts, frogs and several species of water beetle. To make sure that we keep that diversity, we have to reset periodically. This gives succession a chance to start over again undisturbed, creating little micro-habitats around the margins. A great example of this is the willow trees on the back edge of the Dragonfly Pond which support our fantastic little Willow Emerald Damselflies. This was the first identified population in South Yorkshire!
Willow Emerald Damselfies during tandem oviposition at the Dragonfly Pond
This is true of the Reserve on a larger scale too. We have to work within the cycles of the wildlife and avoid doing anything during the nesting seasons so that we can let nature find its own place and leave it to flourish, only starting over when we start to notice certain areas are no longer suitable for target species.
If you spend even half an hour by the Dragonfly Pond on a bright day, you’re likely to by graced by the presence of one of our large Hawker species. It doesn’t even have to be especially warm; Migrant Hawkers will be on the wing until early November. Southern Hawkers are a daily visitor right now, as a direct result of the maintenance done on the pond and others around the Discovery Trail, where visitors can enjoy close-up views of the wonderful range of insects on offer in our area, rather than leaving them to be forced out to open water where they go un-noticed and unrecorded.
Southern Hawker dragonfly over the Dragonfly Pond. Note the logs at the back used by this species for egg-laying
By preserving their tiny niche habitats, they can expand in number, which draws in larger numbers of birds such as swallows and hobbies. That way, we can ensure that there is something for everyone. So if you see an area of the reserve taken back to bare ground, please be patient and watch it closely. I promise you that exciting things are sure to turn up there.