A pet subject of mine, hence the high number of records three kilometres west of Hythe, a site I visit several times a year hoping to find definitive proof of successful breeding.  The most I have seen in any visit there was in May 2025 with nine adults including two ovipositing females but I have seen some there every year since 2018.  A nod to Simon Stone who likewise searches for these in all sorts of remote places ("remote" being relative of course, it is Hampshire).  They have a preference for shallow water with only short vegetation, such as the seepages and flushes often found in New Forest valleys with the vegetation kept short by the livestock and even minimised in extent by trampling.  This kind of habitat tends to be fairly stable within the Forest and allows permanent rather than transient populations which elsewhere pop up in newly-created sites but disperse once the vegetation becomes too much.  I wonder then if dessication of shallow sites in recent years might be responsible for the apparent decline exceeding that in England at large.  Another feature of this species is that it very likely now produces two generations each year in Britain (David Chelmick, Journal of the BDS volume 38 number 1, April 2022) and my interest in them is at least partly driven by wanting to find more evidence to support this.  This issue is considered further in the flight period pages of this web site.

Fact for the day: another Ischnura, Ischnura hastata, has a population in the Azores which is able to reproduce without involvement of a male (Parthenogenetic Ischnura hastata, widespread in the Azores, 2005: Adolfo Cordero-Rivera, M. Olalla Lorenzo-Carballa, Virgilio Vieira).  I can't find a reference for this next bit but I'm sure I remember it correctly - the offspring are not clones of the female parent ... ?!?