The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Hi all,

Sitting here dreaming of summer and wondering what field guides you use and would suggest for dragonflies and also butterflies?

Thanks,

Hugh

Hi Hugh

When choosing field guides to the more popular insect groups the thing is always to look for ones with illustrations by Richard Lewington. Not only are his paintings superb for ID, but so good I think they're worth owning as art in themselves.

Assuming you're only interested in the UK, these are the ones I'd pick:

Dragonflies:

Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Great Britain and Ireland - Steve Brooks and Richard Lewington (£18 on Amazon - avoid 1st edition of this book, as it does not contain recent colonists, at least one of which you could find quite easily in the UK now).

...or if you prefer a photographic guide, Britain's Dragonflies (WILDGuides) - by Dave Smallshire and Andy Swash - is also very good - £10 on Amazon)...

Butterflies:

Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland - Richard Lewington (£9.49 on Amazon).

For both dragonflies and butterflies there are also Lewington-illustrated guides for the whole of Europe which use many of the same illustrations - brilliant for holidays etc.

HTH

Bill

Hi Bill,

Thanks very much for the reply. Very helpful and much appreciated.

Hugh

Hi Hugh,
There is also the superb new work by Lewington and Dijkstra,Dragonflies of Britain and Europe,which covers all the European species,including vagrant species from North Africa and America,it also gives the alernative names used in Europe such as Blue Hawker for Southern Hawker.It also incorperates photo's as well as distribution maps,this is definately the most important dragonfly book to own in my opinion and is well worth the 21.95 i payed for it.


Regards


Steve

Got the two books Bill suggested and am well pleased. Agree Steve that the book you suggest is superb and may get later.

What I really needed was an aide memoire as with age or thickness I tend to forget easy identification marks.

In the field and especially with birds prefer to make notes but a noddy sort of guide helps as a prompt.

Thanks for your replies,

Hugh