The season is finally upon us when sun-loving dragonflies are emerging from their aquatic homes. The cold beginning to the year has certainly delayed their appearance, but flashes of blue and green are now being seen above our local ponds and streams.
The name dragonfly is often used to refer to insects of the order Odonata, that includes both the actual dragonflies and their close relatives, the damselflies. In this blog we will use the word dragonfly to describe only the genuine dragonflies from the sub-group Anisoptera.
Although initially very similar in appearance, dragonflies and damselflies can be easily told apart by a few identifying features. Dragonflies tend to be larger and bulkier insects overall with significantly larger eyes when compared to the slim built and rather delicate damsels. When at rest dragonflies hold their wings open whereas damsels remain closed.
These insects are not only beautiful but are also very important members of freshwater ecosystems. They manage populations of smaller prey species such as mosquitos and provide a source of food for many birds including wagtails, kingfishers and hobbies. They are a reliable indicator of good quality freshwater.
There are just under 30 species of dragonfly living in the UK. Identification of these is primarily performed using the patterns and colouration of the thorax and abdomen, although some particularly similar species need the finer details, such as leg colour, to be examined.
Below are ten of the most common and widespread species you are likely to spot, split by taxonomic family.
Hawkers (Aeshnidae)
Hawkers (also known as Darners) are a family of large rather ‘traditional- looking’ dragonflies. They are very strong fliers, often seen flying forwards and backwards and hovering in mid-air. The name hawker, meaning to hunt on the wing, references their ability to catch prey in flight using their feet or mouthparts. Hawkers rarely come to rest, making identification more challenging than other groups.
Common Hawker – Aeshna juncea
Appearance: A large black or brown dragonfly with blue spots along the body.
Look out for: Two extended yellow lines on the thorax (highlighted in the image) make it possible to separate the male of this species from its counterpart, the migrant hawker. The patterns on the abdomen that are also highlighted below also differ and will be explained further below.
Months active: June – October
Size: 7.4cm
Migrant Hawker – Aeshna mixta
Appearance: Overall, very similar in appearance to the common hawker although very slightly smaller.
Identification: This species has truncated, or non-existent stripes on the thorax, separating it from the common hawker. However the most important feature, present in both males and females, is the noticeable widening of the abdominal line at the top, forming a T shape that is not present on the common hawker.
Months active: July – November
Size: 6.3cm
Southern Hawker – Aeshna cyanea
Identification: A bright and colourful dragonfly with alternating lime green and blue markings.The females of this species lack the blue and so appear more modestly coloured.
Months active: June – October
Size: 7cm
Brown Hawker – Aeshna grandis
Appearance: Brown-bodied dragonfly with uniform small blue markings along the side of the abdomen.
Identification: The brown, slightly translucent wings on this species are unique in UK dragonflies, making it easy to identify.
Months active: June – September
Size: 7.3cm
Emperor Dragonfly – Anax imperator
Despite the lack of ‘hawker’ in this dragonfly’s name, it is still found in the same family as the previous species and so is regarded as a hawker-type.
Appearance: An eye-catching brightly coloured species. The UK’s overall bulkiest, largest dragonfly (although not technically the longest – see the golden-ringed).
Identification: Bright green thorax, with blue ‘tail’
Months active: June to August
Size: 7.8cm
Goldenrings (Cordulegastridae)
Another family of large dragonflies, the Goldenrings are also known as ‘Spiketails’ due to the females prominent, long ovipositors at the end of their bodies. Only one member of this family is currently found in the UK, making identification simple.
Golden-ringed Dragonfly – Cordulegaster boltonii
Identification: An appropriately named dragonfly with prominent colouration – bright yellow and black stripes down the body are found on both the males and females of the species.
Months active: May- September
Size: 7.4cm, although females can be up to 8.4cm when including their long ovipositor, making them technically the longest species found in the UK.
Chasers and Darters (Libellulidae)
Chasers and darters are significantly smaller dragonflies than the hawkers and goldenrings, including our smallest species. Appropriately named, these dragonflies tend to perch and then suddenly chase/dart after their prey. Their movement can appear less smooth and instead more erratic than the larger hawkers.
Chasers have rather wide/broad and flattened bodies when compared to the familiar image of a slender bodied dragonfly.
Four-spotted Chaser – Libellula quadrimaculata
Appearance: A ‘stout’ brown dragonfly with a darker tip to the base of the abdomen.
Identification: As the name suggests, four characteristic spots are present on the midpoints of the wings.
Months active: May – September
Size: 3.9- 4.8 cm
Broad-bodied chaser – Libellula depressa
Appearance: Wide-bodied with a striking and beautiful ‘icy’ blue body on male. Females look similar but with a yellowy-golden body.
Identification: A number of other chaser species share the blue colouration, but the broad-bodied is easily the most commonly seen. The dark bases to all four wings is an additional identifying feature.
Months active: May – August
Size: 3.9 – 4.8 cm
Darters are also shorter than the hawker dragonflies but have more slender bodies than the chasers with a ‘cigar-like’ shape.
Common darter – Sympetrum striolatum
Appearance: A brightly coloured, red dragonfly with yellow side stripes on the thorax. Females of the species are instead rather uniformly yellow.
Identification: Despite the coloration, this dragonfly looks very similar to many other darter species, in particular the rarer Ruddy darter. These two can be distinguished by the presence of yellow leg stripes, whereas the Ruddy’s legs are purely black.
Months active: July – October
Size: 3.8 – 4.3cm
Black Darter – Sympetrum danae
Appearance: Smallest resident dragonfly. The males are entirely black whereas females are a bright yellow, appearing similar to the females of the common darter.
Identification: The mature male of this species is the only black dragonfly in the UK.
Months active: June – October
Size: 2.9 – 3.4 cm
Recommended reading:
Field Guide to the Dragonflies of Britain and Europe
By: Klaas-Douwe B Dijkstra, Asmus Schröter and Richard Lewington
Paperback | Oct 2020
Britain’s Dragonflies
By: Dave Smallshire, Andy Swash
Flexibound | Aug 2018
All prices correct at the time of this article’s publication.
In his latest book, 
shapes, forms and colours of the birds. They were so very different to the birds I was used to seeing in the Somerset countryside around our home. After that, every now and again I’d see footage of hummingbirds on wildlife documentaries, and began to appreciate further just how remarkable they were – what Tim Dee described as ‘strange birds: not quite birds or somehow more than birds, birds 2.0, perhaps’.
There were plenty of other moments that I’ll hold in my heart, and they don’t all involve the iconic, rare species. One such was watching Golden-tailed Sapphires, a hummingbird that looks as if it’s been dipped in rainbows, feeding in a clearing in the immediate aftermath of a heavy rain shower. As the sun broke through the dripping vegetation and steaming air we were suddenly surrounded by myriad small rainbows through which the birds were flying. That moment was ephemeral, over almost as soon as it began, but it’s etched in my memory forever. 
I found myself asking myself that very question as my journey into their world unfolded… Hummingbirds certainly seem to touch something deep inside us. They featured in the mythology of the Aztecs; inspired the most dramatic of all of the immense geoglyphs carved into the desert floor by the Nazca; appear in renowned art and literature; and, to this day, are singled out for particular love by those whose gardens they frequent, people who would not necessarily identify themselves as birders.
Inevitably there were some logistical challenges to contend with, not least having to reacquaint myself with horse-riding after a decades-long and deliberate avoidance of it! There were a couple of close encounters with large predators that were, in hindsight, more alarming than they felt at the time – as a naturalist, I was thrilled to get (very) close views of a puma… But perhaps the most challenging moment of all was landing in Bolivia at the very moment the country was taking to the streets to protest the outcome of a recent presidential election. There was an incident at a roadblock manned by armed men that was genuinely scary, with an outcome that hung in the balance for a terrifying instant, and could easily have ended badly.
I sometimes think there’s almost too much optimism expressed when talking about conservation challenges anywhere in the world – a narrative that suggests “if we only care enough, the [insert iconic species name here] can be saved”. And to a degree, that’s good – we’ve got to have hope, as the alternative is too dreadful to countenance – but given our impact to date, and in an uncertain future where the effects of climate change are still unfolding and will continue for many decades to come, to name just the biggest of the mounting pressures on the natural world, I’m not sure that I do feel terribly optimistic, least of all for those hummingbird species that have very localized populations, or depend upon very specific habitats. They’re undeniably vulnerable. But like Fox Mulder, 
As recently featured on 
photographing and surveying insects. I learned about the insects, watched them and counted the sheer number of species, and realised that no one else had actually surveyed a small urban park extensively. The book came about as I wanted to show people what was living in the bushes and to put Peckham on the entomological map!
and usually open 24 hours – but there is no reason why we can’t include habitats for our wildlife. A simple solution would be to leave areas un-mowed to grow wild. In the parks of my local area in London, large swathes of grasses and flowers have been left to mature and people have been really receptive to it. I think we are finally moving away from the Victorian ideal of neat and tidy!
For nearly thirty years now I have been going to stay in a small house at the head of a bay on the west coast of Scotland. It is somewhere my wife’s family have been going for generations and now our children and grandchildren love it too. It has everything you might long for from a place like that: cliffs, woods, waterfalls, a dark beach made of basalt sands, a lighthouse, a ruined castle, stories, beauty, birds, fish; but one thing it did not have because of the geology, was a rockpool. For years I have dreamed of making one – a place of stillness set in the tide, and this book is the story of how I made three of them in different parts of the bay; one dug in with a pickaxe; one made by damming a narrow exit to the sea from a hollow so that the dam held the pool behind it; and one by making a circular wall low down in the intertidal.
And so that provided the model – see what was there and look carefully at it. Of course, books like mine are entirely parasitic on the work of many generations of biologists and that too turned out to be the pattern. Watch the sand hoppers and then read about them. Read about them and see how much of what I read I could find on the shore. With prawns, winkles, shore crabs, anemones, limpets, sea-stars, urchins and barnacles, I simply oscillated between the pools and my books: what was there? What had people discovered about them? How did they interact? What were the principles governing their presence or absence? And with all of that came the repeated and slightly sobering realisation that unless I knew to look for something it was very difficult to see it was there. Mysteriously, we are often blind to what is in front of our eyes.
stages, can recognise the movements and timings of the tides. That sea anemones can identify other sea anemones that are not their relations and effectively destroy them. That prawns have an imagination – that might sound like too much, but it has been shown that they can remember past pain and project it into present and future anxieties. Anxiety is different from fear; it is a fear of what might be there. In other words a prawn can think beyond its present reality.
garden whose walls are dissolved twice a day, an enclosure that becomes part of the general world with every high tide. That ambiguity is what entranced me, the sense of its being a micro-ocean, a micro-arcadia, a micro-laboratory in which all kinds of intimacies and precision in natural beings can be witnessed an inch beneath your nose.
The 
And most importantly – just go out there and watch mammals. I may be biased, but for me there is nothing better than being out in the countryside early on a spring morning watching the hares chasing around and knocking seven bells out of each other. You might like to stay up late watching badgers or bats, or enjoy the crazy antics of a squirrel on a bird feeder. It’s important that we engage with nature and encourage our children to do the same. If we don’t see and understand wildlife, we won’t fight for it. And, trust me, we need to fight for it.