Large red & Azure damselflies

(originally published May 19, 2012)

Whilst taking a stroll around Little island near Cork last week I managed to find a sizeable group of large red damselflies in Fota gardens. At first I feared that getting close to them might be problematic and therefore I wouldn’t get a good shot. This fear was soon laid to rest as I discovered a minimum of 50 of these lovely damselflies. I never saw this species before which made the day all the better. This is Ireland’s only red species of damselfly aside from the rufescens form blue tailed damselfly I found last year. These are my first Odontates of 2012. Hopefully there will be plenty more to follow.

Amongst them where a small number of blue type damselflies. Once home and looking through the pictures I quickly ruled out blue tailed and common blue damselflies which left only azure and variable damselflies as candidates. I can’t say it was easy since some of the diagnostic features are hard to figure out from these shots. With some help at dragonflyireland’s facebook page however they were pinned down to azure’s.