Meet Cormac’s Dragonfly Squad, Cornwall’s odd bug fix

Ask any outdoor worker in Cornwall what keeps them company on a warm afternoon and the honest answer is usually midges. So when three colleagues from Cormac’s Environment Service turned up to work with tiny fake dragonflies clipped to their hard hats, it raised a few eyebrows on site. Four days later, nobody was laughing.

📷Credit: Cormac

A four-day trial with an unlikely recruit

The trio, all from Cormac’s Environment Service, spent four days putting dragonfly decoys to the test in the field, to see whether the fake insects could help keep biting bugs away without reaching for a bottle of repellent. Dragonflies are natural predators of midges and flies, and the theory is simple enough. If something that looks like a dragonfly is hovering nearby, the bugs that would normally be biting stay well clear.

It turned into enough of a success that the trio have been affectionately renamed the Dragonfly Squad, and their findings have got other outdoor workers wondering whether it’s time to recruit a wingman of their own.

📷Credit: Cormac

What the Dragonfly Squad learned

Across the four days, a few clear patterns emerged. Decoys that wobbled about on their wire clips, rather than sitting rigid, appeared to work best, presumably because the movement reads as more convincingly alive. Wearing two decoys rather than one also offered noticeably better protection than a single fake dragonfly on its own.

Clothing colour played a part too. Light-coloured and high-vis gear attracted less unwanted insect attention than darker clothing, which is useful to know for a workforce that spends its days in hi-vis anyway.

📷Credit: Cormac

Fooling a real dragonfly

The strangest result of the whole trial came when one particularly convincing decoy caught the attention of an actual dragonfly, drawn in as if the fake were the real thing. Whether that counts as a compliment to whoever picked the decoys is up for debate, but it’s a fair sign the trick works both ways.

Across the whole trial, the team found the decoys provided effective protection against biting insects without needing to rely on insect repellent at all, a small win for anyone who would rather not spray something on their skin every morning before heading out.

Recruit your own dragonfly wingman

Cormac environment teams work outdoors across the county in all weathers, from grass cutting to hedge maintenance, so anything that makes a summer shift more comfortable tends to catch on fast. The Dragonfly Squad’s findings are informal, born out of four days of trial and error rather than a scientific study, but the results were convincing enough that the decoys have stuck around.

So if the bugs have been getting the better of you this summer, it might be worth picking up a couple of fake dragonflies of your own. Wobbly ones, and preferably a pair.

📷Credit: Cormac