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A fully updated and expanded edition of the essential field guide to British Odonata, featuring unrivalled full-colour artwork of all 58 species. Adult dragonflies are among the largest and most spectacular insects alive today, and their beautiful colours, phenomenal aerobatic skills and habit of flying only in warm, sunny weather make them easy to observe. Now in its sixth edition, this practical guide will help you to distinguish between all 58 species, with fascinating descriptive accounts and insect-watching tips. Stunning paintings by renowned wildlife artist Richard Lewington allow for quick and accurate identification, and the guide also features an identification key to the larvae of all the resident and migratory dragonfly and damselfly species. This sixth edition has been fully revised in light of recent unprecedented changes in the range of many of our species, as well as consolidation by new colonists. Updated regional guides, flight-period charts and distribution maps help you to determine when and where to see each species, and the authors have included tips on how to use digital photographs to record and identify dragonflies and damselflies observed in the field. All the species descriptions have been fully revised to include the latest information on life history, biology and ecology, supplemented by more than 50 additional artworks and 125 photographs that are new for this edition.
List of contents
Introduction
Life history Distribution
Dragonfly habitats
Dragonflies and the law Regional guides
Identification
Introduction to the families
Key to dragonfly larvae
Species descriptions
ZYGOPTERA DAMSELFLIES
Calopterygidae Demoiselles
Lestidae Emerald damselflies
Platycnemididae White-legged damselflies
Coenagrionidae Red damselflies and blue damselflies
ANISOPTERA DRAGONFLIES
Aeshnidae Hawker dragonflies
Gomphidae Club-tailed dragonflies
Cordulegastridae Golden-ringed dragonflies
Corduliidae Emerald dragonflies
Libellulidae Chaser, skimmer and darter dragonflies
Further reading
Addresses
Checklist of Odonata of Great Britain and Ireland
Index
About the author
Steve Brooks became fascinated by dragonflies when he was young, and pursued this interest in his career as a specialist in freshwater insects and environmental change at the Natural History Museum in London. He has published 281 scientific papers and book chapters, many of them on dragonflies, and five books, including a New Naturalist volume.
Steve is a founder member of the British Dragonfly Society (BDS), a former editor of the Journal of the British Dragonfly Society, and served on the BDS Conservation Committee. He is Associate Editor of Odonatologica.
Steve Cham has had a life-long interest in natural history from an early age.
He is the author of a number of books on dragonflies, including popular field guides to larvae and exuviae, and was co-editor of the Atlas of Dragonflies in Britain and Ireland.
Steve has been granted honorary membership of the NBN Trust in recognition of his services to biological recording in the UK, and in 2011 was awarded the Royal Entomological Society Marsh Award for Insect Conservation.
Richard Lewington is an acknowledged leader in the field of insect illustration. His meticulous paintings of wildlife are the mainstay of many of the modern classics of field-guide art, including The Butterflies of Britain and Ireland, Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland, Field Guide to the Micro-moths of Great Britain and Ireland, Field Guide to the Caterpillars of Great Britain and Ireland, Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland, Field Guide to the Ladybirds of Britain and Ireland, Field Guide to the Dragonflies of Britain and Europe, Guide to Garden Wildlife and the Pocket Guide to British Spiders. Richard has also designed and illustrated wildlife stamps for several countries. In 1999 he was awarded Butterfly Conservation's Marsh Award for the promotion of Lepidoptera conservation, and in 2010 the Zoological Society of London's Stamford Raffles Award for contribution to zoology. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society.
