Field Guide to the Dragonflies of Britain and Europe - Tapa blanda

This superb new identification guide to all the dragonflies and damselflies of Britain and Europe, presented in an accessible, easy-to-use format, is the essential companion for the new generation of dragonfly watchers. Written by a team of dragonfly experts from across Europe, co-ordinated by K-D Dijkstra, and illustrated by Richard Lewington, generally accepted to be Europe's foremost illustrator of insects. The guide covers all of Europe, from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean Basin, including western Turkey, Cyprus, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and the Azones, Canaries and Madeira. The comprehensive texts and innovative keys and identification tables of adults of all 160 species of Odonata include field characters, hand characters, variation, behaviour, range and status, habitat and flight season, together with newly-researched distribution maps. There is also a comprehensive introduction to studying and identifying dragonflies, and a country-by-country guide to where to find them throughout Europe and North Africa and Turkey.

Klaas-Douwe KD B Dijkstra developed an interest in natural history as a child living in Egypt. Here he made his first observations of dragonflies as a 12-year-old, having to invent his own scientific names for them because he had no literature. The discovery of the first Anax ephippiger in The Netherlands in 1995 incited an active involvement in Dutch dragonfly work. KD was a founding member of the Dutch society for odonatology in 1997, as editor of its journal Brachytron, and co-edited and co-authored the handbook of Dutch Odonata published in 2002. He obtained an MSc in biology at Leiden University in 1998, developing a passion for Africa during fieldwork in Uganda in 1995. As a research associate of the National Museum of Natural History Naturalis in The Netherlands, KD has worked on the systematics and biogeography of tropical African Odonata since 2001. In 2005, he shared the Worldwide Dragonfly Association outstanding achievement award for this work.