The New Season is off to an early start!

Hi all.
First of all, apologies for lack of news during the latter part of last year - various reasons I won't bore you with! I hope to keep the blog more current this year.
Now for the good news - Damian Pinguey reported seeing a semi-mature Large Red Damselfly at the amenity pond in Chippenham on Friday 8th April. This pond is always a good bet to get early sightings of species. It's very shallow and so the water warms up quickly so speeding up larval development!
The other news is that I've 'adopted' a new recording system, developed by Adrian Bicker of the Dorset Dragonfly Group. This system is based online and uses Google maps, so making record input much easier. It also provides instant feedback to the recorder as, once you've entered a record, you can go back in in map mode and view your 'dot' on the map in relation to other records already entered. I hope those of you who send me records might like to use this system [called Living Record]. If so, let me know and I'll set you up with an account. I have entered over 900 records from previous years so far so you can see where more recording effort is required - we have only 2 more recording seasons before the Atlas needs to be produced!!
The weather is reverting back to the norm after today - lets hope the warm conditions will return soon...