On 1st August. 1926. J. E. H. Roberts observed S. sanguineum ovipositing in large
numbers at Langenhoe Wick, in the north-east of the county (Lucas. 1927) whilst
Hammond's diaries record the presence of the species in Epping Forest in the 1920s and
1930s, and again in 1945. Sympetrum sanguineum was also on E. E. Syms' (1929) list for
the Forest, and E. B. Pinniger (1933) referred to it as met with rarely but regularly in the
Forest. Pinniger's subsequent notes in the London Naturalist reported the species from
Hainault Forest in 1934. and from Benfleet in 1936 and 1937 (Pinniger. 1935, 1937 and
1938). Hammond also saw it at Benfleet in 1937 (unpublished diaries).
D. A. Ashwell took specimens of .V. sanguineum at Hatfield Forest in 1940 and 1941
(B.M. (N.H.) collections) and there is another specimen taken at Hatfield Forest by
Bernard Ward in 1949 in the Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge Museum. Another
Essex specimen, taken in 1947 by E. S. Brown at Hadleigh, in the south-east, is in the
Hope Department at Oxford. Cynthia Longfield, in her (1949b) survey of the
dragonflies of the London area declared the species to be probably increasing as a
breeder' in the British Isles. In Essex, she noted the ponds in Epping Forest, Coopersale
Common. Ongar Park, and Hainault Forest as localities where it was then common.
Childerditch Common and Shelley were added to the above localities in the list given
for 1949 by Pinniger. Syms and Ward (1950).
Sympetrum sanguineum populations were in rapid decline in the British Isles by the
mid-1970s, and some alarm was expressed about its prospects as a breeding species. As
an insect with a markedly south-eastern distribution, its fate in Essex was and is
important in a national context. Fortunately, survey results since 1980 show a strong
recovery of S. sanguineum as a breeding species in Essex. So far it has been recorded
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