Book Review: Dragonflies of North America

Arrived in my mailbox today!

Dragonflies of North America, Written and illustrated by Ed Lam, published by Princeton University Press, 2024 and hot off the press.

Introduction

Not since I first laid eyes on David Allen Sibley's illustrated field guide, The Sibley Field Guide to Birds (2003), have I been as excited to see a new illustrated field guide as I have with Ed Lam's field guide Dragonflies of North America just out from Princeton Field Guides. Thus far I've only cracked the cover and have thumbed through the pages, but it's a gem.

All summer long I have struggled with the identification of many of the new dragonflies I saw and photographed having only photographic guides for making an identification.  As good as some of the photographs are, many are just as poor.  I kept thinking that I [we] need better tools for dragonfly ID. For odonate experts and enthusiasts who can net dragonflies this is not a concern with the same urgency.  But I don't net dragonflies and, for a variety of reasons, am unlikely to gain much skill at this.  I rely upon my eyesight (sometimes poor), binocular viewing and my photographs.  Overall I think I do a pretty good job with the limitations I have, but this book should help throw open the door.

For now, this is all I have time to write, but more to come when I have had a chance to sit with the book for awhile.  I include a couple of sample page photos.

Continuing review on Sunday, October 20, 2024

As with any good field guide, Dragonflies of North America begins with an introduction followed by the science, anatomy, life cycles and more (pages 6-28).  Since dragonfly science is significantly different than that of other insect species, this is the essential starting point. Each family also begins with its own description before going into each species specific illustrations included in the family.  All of this is standard for any field guide and it's thorough and complete here.  

At 446 pages, Ed Lam has published a serious book.  In this sense it rivals Dennis Paulson's, by now well-known to all odonate enthusiasts, Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West (2009) and East (2011) odonate guides.  The first caveats needed: Paulson's guides include all three of the Zygoptera families.  On the other hand, Ed Lam's new guide is a complete guide for all of North America's Anisoptera families in a single volume.  Otherwise, the new Dragonflies of North America has the same amount of heft.  I would be uncomfortable, for example, carrying it around in my backpack or reluctant to pack it in my airline carry-on bag.

In his guides, Paulson's photos are small and essentially pre-digital, but he makes up for this with detailed written descriptions of each species.  Generally, the photos are not suitable for identification.  For this reason I prefer to describe Paulson's books as odonate guides and not field guides.  This reminds me, too, of A Naturalist's Guide to the Odonata of Ohio, by McShaffrey, Spring and McCormac (2024), with mostly two to three largish photos of each species per page which may be reasonable for some straightforward odonate identification, but excellent maps and write-ups on the opposite side of the page.  (Ohio has a lot of odonate species, so this is also an excellent guide for the middle eastern part of the US).

As the above page photos reveal, Ed Lam's guide is heavy on illustration and is designed for identification.  As far as I know, (and I am by no means an expert on the variety of odonate guides available ), this is the first fully illustrated field guide.  The range maps are small and the write-ups are brief; in this sense, more like a bird field guide.  

But, back to the illustrations.  Again, for a different comparison, in the Kaufman Field Guide to Butterflies of North America (2003), all of the images began as photographs.  How did Lam draw all of these dragonfly illustrations?  Dragonflies are so complex; their structure, physical features, eyes and wings are astonishingly intricate.  The illustrations have an almost AI-assisted appearance to them.  Don't get me wrong, this is definitely not a criticism.  We need this to see the field marks. Lam uses the same technique for pointing out field marks to notice and look for - male cerci with downward tips, yellow markings nearly meet at top, yellow marking separated at top, femurs partially yellow, tibiae black - are random examples.  This is a common feature of all odonate field guides - often with arrows and circles - but Lam uses clear verbal descriptors and lines lead to the area being described.  Lam offers more descriptors than are typically found in other guides.

If I have one negative observation - and I don't see this is the fault of Ed Lam, the illustrator - many of the illustrations do not reveal the vividness of the colors of many species.  If this is so, I would consider it to be a printing issue.  (I recall making a similar observation with some bird species in David Allen Sibley's second edition Guide to Birds (2014) where the color of some species appeared to be "muddy".)  I am not going to harp on this point.  Many experts and enthusiasts may disagree saying that Lam's illustrations are true to how the dragonfly looks in the hand, unimpacted by the dazzle of the sun or shimmer of the water or shadow of the foliage.

Ed Lam closes his field guide with In-Hand Characters (393-436) with extraordinarily large and detailed black and white renderings of those field marks that are essential for accurate identification of some family and species of dragonflies.  This is something that all novices to the identification of odonates find out, usually with egg on our faces, when we learn that if the dragonfly was not netted and the genitalia not inspected with a magnifier; well, you cannot say it is this or that.  Many species in the Sympetrum group come quickly to mind.  This brings me back to what I wrote in my introduction about being unskilled at netting dragonflies.  This is a real handicap and it is worth taking the effort needed to improve this skill.  Photographs are fine for perching dragonflies; but one will be thwarted by those that fall into the flyer category.  True enough (depending upon the quality of your optics), many species can be photographed in flight; Prince Baskettail and Common Green darner come to mind.  But, while the dragonfly is identifiable, it is mostly not a photo that you will want to brag about. It is the flyers, as well as damselflies (not covered in this guide) that are going to present the identification challenges, and having them in hand and learning to identify by using Lam's In-Hand Characters will be critical for advancing beyond the novice class of dragonfly identification.  I'm still in the novice class.   

Ed Lam also wrote the illustrated guide Damselflies of the Northeast : A Guide to the Species of Eastern Canada & the Northeastern United States (2004) published by Biodiversity Books. This guide can be purchased used from an Amazon dealer for $2,401.11!  A brief on-line search suggests that Biodiversity Books is no longer active and there may be copyright issues that block re-publication.  The opening sentences of one Amazon reviewer, fortunate enough to have purchased this book at its original publishing and going by the name of X Man states, "As a life long active birder, I am pretty familiar with field guides in general. This one is simply a masterpiece and not only is this the best field guide for damselflies, I think it may be the best field guide of any kind I have ever seen." Now that's a 5 star review! After reviewing Dragonflies of North America I'm inclined to agree. Putting it to the test next summer is going to be fun. 

Just as Sibley produced his East and West birding guides, perhaps Ed Lam's next project will be a new Damselflies of North America illustrated guide.  That would be amazing.