Bulgaria Dragonflies.

 A few weeks ago I was invited to co-lead a tour searching for the dragonflies of Bulgaria. Matt and I had been to Bulgaria in 2018, although that trip was mainly looking for butterflies, so with little knowledge of the Bulgarian dragonflies I bought the excellent Wildguide book on the subject and quickly learnt as much as I could. Fortunately for me, the other guide was Bulgarian, and he knew the species extremely well, but I still wanted to know as much as I could. 

The tour of 9 days ended up to be extremely successful and some 53 odonata species were seen in total. So many in fact that I am having to break the posts into several, as there was just simply too much for one blog post. 

As well as the dragonflies, we also saw over 90 butterfly species, which seems absolutely crazy. Normally when I'm leading a tour I take very few photos, but as I didn't have the stress of driving, as well as it being a smaller than usual group, I ended up taking lots of images.

In all the tours I've been involved in, I think this was probably the best of them, despite it being extremely hot for some of the trip, with 4 days hitting 40 degrees!!

To give us the best chance to see most of the main target species we visited 5 different hotels in the country, and one day we visited Lake Kerkini in Greece, to hopefully see the incredible Bladetail dragonfly.

Many of the species we saw can be seen in the UK, but here, most of them have different names, so I will label those photos with the European names and the English name in brackets.

DRAGONFLIES.

Male Small Pincertail.

Female Small Pincertail.

The Small Pincertail is quite a common species in Bulgaria, but also an amazing looking creature. Who would want to be a female of this species, being held in place during mating by the claw type appendages!!

Bulgarian Emerald.

The above Emerald was towards the end of it's flight season, and some of the identifying marks had vanished, so it was a difficult one to identify. Eventually Dansko decided it had to be the Bulgarian after studying it for some time, and eliminating the other possible species.

Southern Skimmer.

The Southern Skimmer, along with plenty of Black-tailed, White-tailed and Keeled Skimmers were seen throughout the trip in good numbers.

Blue-eyed Goldenring.

At one site we were watching both Blue-eyed and Turkish Goldenring dragonflies. Unfortunately, they rarely settled, and when they did they were well out of reach. We did however, see a little bit of egg laying.

Green-eyed Hawker (Norfolk Hawker).

After seeing so many Norfolk Hawkers in Sussex and Norfolk before the trip, this species was a familiar sight to me, but still good to see at close range.

Downy Emerald.

The Downy Emerald was another species that I had seen in reasonable numbers before the trip. however, despite getting my best resting shots before I went, I hadn't got a good flight shot until I was in Bulgaria. This was from a lake high in the mountains where we also saw the Spearhead Bluet, or Northern Damselfly. 

Bladetail.

Around Lake Kerkini we were lucky to get a resting Bladetail. One of the most impressive dragonfly species in Europe. We did see a couple more later in the trip in Bulgaria itself, where this particular Naturetrek tour discovered the first Bulgarian colony of this species in 2017.

Newly emerged Vagrant Emperor.

Also around Lake Kerkini Dansko disturbed this newly emerged Vagrant Emperor, a species rarely seen on this tour. I have seen this species in Fuerteventura before a few times, and also once in Britain, when Matt and I found one in the Cuckmere valley in bizarre circumstances, on the same day that we were watching a Snow Bunting!! There can be few people that can say that they saw a Snow Bunting and a Vagrant Emperor within minutes of each other.

Violet Dropwing.

Unfortunately, this Violet Dropwing was the only one that we saw on the tour. Some of the lakes are used for water for cattle, and the reeds etc around the lake edges are eaten, as well as the fertility of the lakes are starting to change with this use, resulting in some species of dragonfly suffering. Hopefully they will hang on. This Dropwing was very loyal to the same bit of dead reed, and although it was a little too far out in the lake, it meant it was easy to predict where it would land. However, the Black Pennant below, was numerous at the same lake, but simply didn't land anywhere. Eventually I spotted the only one that did seem to land. The light was not really in the best direction, but at least I got a couple of shots of this very small dragonfly.

Black Pennant.

Spotted Darter.

Another small reservoir nearby held a small number of the Spotted Darter. This species had only just started to emerge, so we were very lucky to see any. 

White-tailed Skimmer.

Broad Scarlet (Scarlet Darter).

All through the trip, both the Broad Scarlet and Red-veined Darters were probably the most numerous species of dragonfly.

Blue-eyed Hawker (Southern Migrant Hawker).

The Blue-eyed Hawker is another species becoming much more numerous in southern Britain. These were seen at a few of the lakes as we moved through the southern area of Bulgaria.

Balkan Goldenring.

Sombre Goldenring.

Both Balkan, the largest Goldenring in Europe, and the Sombre Goldenring were seen at a few sites in southern Bulgaria.

Balkan Emerald.

Male Small Pincertail.

On our final full day, with the temperature being 40 degrees again, we were sheltering from the extreme heat along a river, when this Small Pincertail landed on a rock near me. Probably due to the heat, it was not in a rush to take off and this gave me the opportunity to photograph him at close range. This ended up as my favourite dragonfly photo from the trip. Only a short time later I also got my favourite butterfly photo too, which will be in another post, which will be a butterfly theme.

The next post will be of the Damselflies of Bulgaria.