Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East [Paperback]

Claimers and Dis-claimers: I've only spent a couple hours with this book and they were at my desk. Though I had specimens available they were not fresh specimens and I haven't taken this into the field yet (this is January after all). Though I've worked as a lackey on a couple of odonate projects, I'm an insect generalist not an odonate specialist.

This is definitely the best available comprehensive odonate guide for eastern North America. Advantages over Dunkle's Dragonflies Through Binocs include: the damselflies (for a start), plus MUCH better photos, detail photos and line drawings where helpful to illustrate key features, more species-to-species comparisons in both photos, text, and line art to help with difficult IDs, and more accessible and useful natural historical information on each species, often very helpful in determining species.

I can't make up my mind about the page layout. On the one hand, the species are consistently laid out, each with the same sections: Description, Identification, Natural History, Habitat, Flight Season, and Distribution. Each species account starts with a bar color-coded to the genus to draw your eye to the name (common name first, then scientific name in italics followed by measurements in mm). Also a range map and most have both male and female illustrated with large, bright, sharp, well oriented photos. The repetitive structure makes it relatively easy to jump around comparing the same information on each of two or more species that you're contemplating for an ID. On the other hand, putting so much information and so many large pictures into the species accounts means that there are rarely more than two species on any one two-page spread and add in the color bar and short paragraph that heads each genus section and it can be a little hard to sense where you are or build up a head of speed if you're thumbing around. Sometimes the photo for a species is the next page over from the identification text, which is too bad. Because Lam, in his Damselflies of the Northeast, used paintings, he was able to put each species into identical poses, so when you flip through species, you know you're moving from one to another every time you see another perpendicular display of abdomen and wing. To be fair, it is important for dragonflies to communicate their perching posture so you wouldn't want to digitally wrench the photos around ala Kaufman's butterfly book just for the sake of order. Also, the designers made a choice to keep the book pocket sized (though at 30 mm thick that's your call) but still retain rich species accounts and that just means you have to suck it up on the page layout. Also, the designer clearly tried hard to come up with cues and tricks to help you stay oriented (using color bars for instance). Finally, if I used the book enough to memorize which colors went with which genera, I'd probably feel less disoriented.

I do miss the little lines and arrows that are often used in field guides to point out important features. If you are reading the description and identification text and jumping back and forth to the picture (sometimes across pages) I (at least) have to use a lot of brain power to process the technical words into visual search images then flip to the picture, find the right location, and finally see what the author was talking about. I'm not saying that with more time it wouldn't go away, I'm just throwing it out there as an observation.

Speaking of the text, for each species I'd say the text is pretty great throughout, great descriptions and very interesting natural historical remarks. Many of the remarks about behavior were very useful, things like if you see a darner doing X, it is probably such and such a species. I did find the content of the description, identification, natural history, and habitat sections a little confused or perhaps duplicative. The descriptions are sometimes too general, or perhaps just in the wrong place. For instance in the Enallagma, the hard core identification needs to be done with language about abdominal segments and humeral stripes, and all that's in there, to be sure, but many species accounts also include something like, predominantly black above and blue below, with more blue distally. I'd guess the author wanted to encourage beginners by giving them a general character, which is fine, but there's already an Enallagma genus intro paragraph and when the species accounts are already pushing onto two pages maybe tougher editing could have helped.

I have one knock about the illustrations. The species accounts regularly mention regional variations, which is good, but they don't always give you detailed help in recognizing them. Now that's fine for a general guide to an area as large as eastern North America, but then it's too bad that so many of the illustrations are western specimens. Many species are illustrated with Arizona specimens and specimens from parts of Texas not in the guide's ostensible coverage area. You have to give Paulson some latitude so he can give us the best available illustrations of the species, but with the attention to regional variability in the text, it does leave one a little uneasy.

The range maps are decent sized and readible, but they're not detailed enough to help distinguish regional variability. The author does say in the intro that range maps are by their nature generalizations and the short but well chosen biography does refer readers to regional guides where more details would be available.

I really liked the introductory section. It is liberally illustrated with the same high level of quality as the rest of the book and the anatomical illustrations are just great. I especially like the section on suggestions for future research. It's great to see such an accomplished naturalist be so encouraging of beginners and non-professionals.

Summary: This is a great book and a long overdue replacement for Dunkle. There are a few things I didn't particularly like in my first appraisal, most notably all the Texas photos. However, I recognize each is a decision the author and designer made for good reasons and allow that I might change my mind as I worked with the book. I describe them here so you get a better picture of the book and can make up your own mind if it would work for you. I'm not sure if I were headed out the door to do some ode'ing I'd grab this book over the Massachusetts field guide (Nikula, et al. 2nd ed. 2007) and Lam's Damselflies, but we're lucky here to have such good regional guides and both appear in the bibliography (though I see that it doesn't cite the improved 2nd ed of Nikula). If I were traveling beyond my native coastal southern New England and didn't know the local scene, or were going to an area without a good regional guide, I'd definitely grab Paulson's new book and it's probably all I'd need.

Dennis Paulson's new eastern book was well worth the wait, and odonate enthusiasts throughout the country have been anxiously awaiting this great new guide.

It is NOT a rehash of his western guide, but contains more detailed information on the species that are common to both areas. The illustrations are splendid, and the book is easy to use for the beginner, yet comprehensive enough for the more advanced odonatist.

If you could have only ONE odonate guide, I think THIS is the one. Covers both dragonflies and damselflies, and take odonate guidebooks to a new level.

This book has the best photos and illustrations of all of the dragonfly books I have. The photography in this book is truly exceptional for seeing the details on the dragonflies and damselflies. It is the most complete book about dragonflies in the eastern US I've found. I had pre-ordered the book and it wasn't published until a couple of weeks after the expected date, but it was well worth the wait, especially for the price on Amazon.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 8 reviews  4.9 out of 5 stars