Libélulas de Málaga

04.04.2025 The sale of the apartment was completed. Future visits to the Álora area will be a lot less frequent (if at all!) so this website will not be updated.

March 2025 has seen a lot of rain in the Guadalhorce valley and filled the Turón, Guadalhorce and Grande rivers and the arroyos de Las Cañas and Casarabonela and the reservoirs so hopefully the 2025 dragonfly season will be a good one.

AFAIK the work on the bridge over the arroyo de Las Piedras is not quite complete and I'm not sure if access to the confluence of the arroyo and the río Guadalhorce will be easy when it has been completed.

25.10.2024 I have now uploaded (using the easy to use recently introduced import tool) all my Spanish observations into Observation.org so I won't be keeping this site up to date. Observation.org is used by the local observers and also the visitors from northern europe so will always have much more up to date information than I can produce.

16.10.24 A caveat: I have not made any visits in the peak months of July, August and September since 2018 so recent information on this website is limited. As a non-resident I never know the water levels at any of the sites I mention on this website until I arrive on a trip and with the current levels of drought it can be disappointing. I did visit in late September 2024 - pre-warned of the lack at water at some sites - and I didn't visit any of the arroyos local to Álora although the río Guadalhorce had plenty of water and insect life on the banks. I think it is unlikely that I will make many future visits.

I have been looking for and reporting dragonflies in Málaga province since 2005 and I am now part of the team working on the Málaga dragonfly atlas.

Here you will find a list of the dragonflies which have been recorded in Málaga province with links to individual species pages. I have used the scientific and english names as given in Dijkstra, Schröter & Lewington. The order of species should be the same as in the book.

There is a more recent publication Libélulas de la Gran Senda de Málaga y provincia. Guía de identificación by José Manuel Moreno-Benítez and Javier Ripoll. As well as being an ID guide there is a lot of useful information about habitats and flight times and broad locations. An english language version is now available.

If you use facebook then you might find the following groups useful El rincón de las Libélulas, Asociacion odonatologica de Andalucia (AoA)., Odonatos de Andalucia (now re-labelled Dragonflies of the world!), Odonatos Ibéricos and Libélulas ROLA - or, like me, you might wonder why there is so much need to crosspost!

The Spanish and the northern european visitors to Spain all tend to use Observation.org and it is probably the best place to find up to date information.

Note that Macromia splendens, Oxygastra curtisii, Gomphus graslinii and Zygonyx torridus are 'sensitive' species and I will not provide people with detailed information which is not in the ROLA bulletins or in other publications. Onychogomphus costae and Orthetrum nitidinerve are scarce species in Malaga province and I have provided one site for each on the sites page.

There is some information on sites I have visited quite regularly (as a tourist not a resident!).

Lestes barbarus - Migrant Spreadwing

Lestes virens - Small Spreadwing

Lestes macrostigma - Dark Spreadwing

Chalcolestes viridis - Western Willow Spreadwing

Sympecma fusca - Common Winter Damsel

Calopteryx xanthostoma - Western Demoiselle

Calopteryx virgo - Beautiful Demoiselle

Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis - Copper Demoiselle

Platycnemis acutipennis - Orange Featherleg

Platycnemis latipes - White Featherleg

Ischnura elegans - Common Bluetail