An indispensable guide to Great Britain and Ireland's resident and migrant dragonfly and damselfly species.

Whizzing over water with metallic bodies and often iridescent wings, dragonflies and damselflies are arguably one of our most overlooked and beautiful insects. This practical guide will help you to distinguish between skimmers and darters, with fascinating species accounts and insect-watching tips. To aid quick and accurate identification, the book also contains more than 280 stunning paintings by renowned artist, Richard Lewington.

The 2002 edition was shortlisted for the BP Natural World Book Prize. This updated edition has been fully revised and redesigned to feature full descriptions, ecological notes and distribution maps, as well as a general introduction and regional guide to the best places to watch dragonflies.

Steve Brooks has had an interest in dragonflies since he was young. He was impressed by the voracity of dragonfly larvae which ate everything else in the jam jar he had filled after pond dipping trips with his dad, and by the spectacle of the adult dragonflies later emerging during the night from those same jars lined up on his bedroom windowsill. Steve has been fortunate to pursue this interest in his professional career as a specialist in freshwater insects and environmental change at the Natural History Museum in London. Steve has published over 190 scientific papers and book chapters, many of them on dragonflies, and five books, including the New Naturalist volume Dragonflies with Philip Corbet. Steve is a founder member of the British Dragonfly Society (BDS), was a former editor of the Journal of the British Dragonfly Society, and currently serves on the BDS Conservation Committee. He is Associate Editor of Odonatologica and Journal of Paleolimnology.

Steve Cham has had a life long interest in all aspects of natural history and a passion for dragonflies from an early age. He has served as Vice-county recorder for Bedfordshire and was National Co-ordinator for the Dragonfly Recording Network after it transitioned from the Biological Records Centre at Monkswood and was one of the editors of the Atlas of Dragonflies in Britain and Ireland published in 2014. He is the author of a number of books on dragonflies, including the popular field guides to larvae and exuviae. Steve was elected to honorary membership of the NBN Trust in 2008 in recognition of his services to biological recording in the UK and awarded the Royal Entomological Society Marsh Award for Insect Conservation in 2011.

Over almost forty years, Richard Lewington has built up a reputation as one of Europe's finest wildlife illustrators. He first became interested in butterflies as a child when he inherited a cabinet of insects from his father. He studied graphic design at the Berkshire College of Art, and since leaving in 1971 has specialised in natural-history illustration. His meticulous paintings of insects and other wildlife are the mainstay of many of the modern classics of field-guide art, including Insects of Britain and Western Europe, Collins Butterfly Guide, Field Guide to Dragonflies of Britain and Europe, Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland, Pocket Guide to Butterflies of Britain and Ireland and Guide to Garden Wildlife. He was, for many years, the principal artist on the multi-volume series, The Moths and Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland. He has also designed and illustrated wildlife stamps for a number of countries, including a set of ten stamps of British butterflies for Royal Mail in 2013.