Fully illustrated with lavish close-up photography and detailed artwork, this is a field guide to the Irish dragonflies and damselflies designed primarily for naturalists, photographers and others who want to improve their field identification skills. The aim is to provide the reader with a quick reference guide to the adults of all the resident and migrant species which have been recorded in Ireland since 1980. There are brief texts on aspects such as behaviour, ecology and distribution, and descriptions which highlight the key diagnostic features of each species and the average flight period. The artworks by Richard Lewington on each species page illustrate mature males (occasionally teneral males) and females (not exactly to scale). The adult length and wingspan indicates the average size of the insect from the head to the tip of the abdomen and the typical wingspan.
Robert Thompson is an accomplished freelance natural history photographer, author and acclaimed specialist in close-up & macro photography in the UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and the Irish Photographic Federation and has written numerous books on various natural history topics and nature photography.
Brian Nelson works for Ireland’s National Parks and Wildlife Service as invertebrate ecologist and was, with Robert Thompson, coordinator for the Dragonfly Ireland project and co-author of The Natural History of lreland's Dragonflies. Brian has written papers and books on many aspects of Irish insects and is especially pleased to have discovered several new Irish species. He regularly gives training courses on dragonfly identification.