{"id":7474,"date":"2025-05-24T09:57:55","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T08:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/?p=7474"},"modified":"2026-04-28T13:09:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:09:57","slug":"dragonflies-at-goring-24th-may-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/dragonflies-at-goring-24th-may-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragonflies at Goring &#8211; 24th May 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alan Holmes led 10 members and a guest on a walk to look for the Common Clubtail Dragonfly <em>Gomphus vulgatissimus<\/em> on the morning of Saturday 24 May. It is a dragonfly of slow-flowing rivers with a silty bottom. The River Thames near Goring is one of the best places to find this dragonfly. The River Severn is another hotspot. Members gathered at the Station Road car park before setting off along a succession of footpaths to the Thames Path. It was a cool, cloudy morning with a strong wind \u2013 not ideal conditions for finding the target dragonfly. The exuvia (shed larval skin) is typically found on places such as culverts and bridges. The Thames path was initially bordered by big multi-stemmed<br>willows, but soon emerged into open meadows. The first insect sighting was a Harlequin Ladybird larva. Water Figwort plants were found next to the river, distinguished from Common Figwort by their winged 4-angled stems. Also seen by the river were Great Willowherb, Wild Angelica and Meadowsweet. A small flock of House Martins flew twittering over the river and the waterside meadows. Next, both male and female Banded Demoiselles were seen on bankside vegetation. The male has a metallic blue-green body and wings with a dark blue-black band, with unpigmented sections next to the body and at the wing tip. The female has a metallic green abdomen and unpigmented wings. Then a male Blue-tailed Damselfly was seen. It had a predominately black abdomen, but with section 8 blue. (The abdomen has 9 segments, with section 1 nearest to the thorax and section 9 furthest from the thorax). Continuing south-eastwards along the river bank, Goat\u2019s-beard and Teasel were seen. Next sighting was a White-legged Damselfly on taller vegetation in the meadow next to the river. In total during the morning, about five specimens were seen, indicating that there might be a breeding colony nearby. Then a Roessel\u2019s Bush-cricket was spotted. Next, black spiky caterpillars of a Peacock butterfly were found on Nettle. Butterfly watchers were excited to see a Small Tortoiseshell on a clump of longer vegetation out in the meadow. This butterfly is becoming a rare sighting in our area nowadays. A small group of Mayflies were doing their rising and falling mating dance over the river, approximately five metres from the bank. The Thames Path went through a gate and into Little Meadow. Signs near the gate explained that the meadow is managed by the team from Withymead Nature Reserve. Close to the path across the meadow were a number of clumps of Meadow Crane\u2019s-bill. More White-legged Damselflies were seen here. Two Goldfinches were seen on a willow and Chiffchaff and Reed Warbler were heard. The path left Little Meadow by a second gate and emerged next to the Brunel railway bridge. This is the classic site for finding the exuviae and they had been seen here earlier in the week but alas there was no sign of them this time. Members had their picnic on the grassy riverbank next to the bridge and waited unsuccessfully for the dragonflies to fly past. Unfortunately, on this occasion, there was no sign of them. An adult Mayfly was seen on a reed stem approximately 100mm above the surface of the river. Admitting defeat, the group then retraced their footsteps back to Goring. We now know where to go and when to go \u2013 perhaps next time we will have better luck and manage to see a Common Clubtail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alan Holmes led 10 members and a guest on a walk to look for the Common Clubtail Dragonfly Gomphus vulgatissimus on the morning of Saturday&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_customify_content_layout":"","_customify_sidebar":"","_customify_page_header_display":"default","_customify_disable_header":"","_customify_disable_header_top":"","_customify_disable_header_main":"","_customify_disable_header_bottom":"","_customify_disable_page_title":"","_customify_disable_content_vertical_padding":"","_customify_disable_footer_top":"","_customify_disable_footer_main":"","_customify_disable_footer_bottom":"","_customify_breadcrumb_display":"","_customify_header_transparent_display":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[55,54,49],"class_list":["post-7474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-field-trip-reports","tag-clubtail-dragonfly","tag-goring-on-thames","tag-wildlife-walk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7474"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7495,"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474\/revisions\/7495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdnhs.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}