martytdx's Full Review: Sidney W. Dunkle - Dragonflies Through Binoculars:...
Last summer, my wife and I both had Nikon D70 dSLR cameras to play with, and unfortunately were dealing with one of the hazards of summers in the Mid-Atlantic region - a dearth of interesting birds to photograph. You can only take so many pictures of robins, catbirds and sparrows. So, eager to play and explore, we started turning our attentions to other subjects. One of those was something I had made fun of my naturalist buddy for getting excited about - butterflies. But once we started looking at them - and dragonflies - and getting some nice shots, we suddenly found ourselves scrambling to ID the species. Like many things, until you really start watching, you never realize how much variance there can be. The web was a great help (particularly www.bugguide.net), but we wanted something with more meat to it that made it easier to find these specimens, or at least put us in the right direction.
So, we went out to get some guidebooks. As with butterflies, until you start really looking you don't understand the broad scale of the number of dragonflies in this country - and the paucity of good guides to them. I found a number of websites that helped me out a bit, but almost all of them were done by volunteers using their own pictures - limiting at best. So, when we bought our copy of Butterflies through Binoculars - Eastern Edition, we followed the same path and picked up Dragonflies Through Binoculars by Sidney W. Dunkle. There are a number of other dragonfly guides out there, but almost all of them are regional volumes - "Dragonflies of Massachusetts", "Great Lakes Dragonflies", etc. This book covers all of North America, making it a good reference for almost everyone in the U.S. and Canada.
[ • about the GUIDE •]
As with the butterfly guide, this guide is well organized - and makes it easy to find and research what you're looking for. Author Sidney W. Dunkle, a professor of biology at Collin County Community College seems to have a good grasp of dragonflies, and does a good job with the book in terms of putting them in a logical order and guiding the reader toward ID'ing what they've seen. It takes in all 307 species of dragonfly found in the North America - quite a task to get a handle on. It starts out with a great primer on the basics of dragonflies and their anatomy, habits and identification. The diagram(s) points out parts that often used to ID similar dragonflies, and is a great tool that I've returned to on several occasions.
Then come the main sections of the book: the textual and photographic species accounts. The text section breaks down the dragonflies by families, genuses and species, giving a ton of information about each dragonfly, some comparative notes and useful tidbits about the genuses and families themselves. The photographs, presented in a series of plates, give the user a great set of images to use for comparing to the species you're looking at (or have photographed, as the case is with us).
Text Accounts »
Each section begins with a family of dragonflies - Darners, Clubtails, Skimmers, etc., and then delves into sub-families, genuses, sub-genuses and finally individual species accounts. Dunkle uses his extensive experience to not only give the facts about distribution, identification and basic behavior, but usually adds some personal observations that add to the description, including things to look for or behavioral clues. As for the 'official' stuff, each species account lists the following information:
Common Name, species name, plate number
Identification (size in inches, geographic location, rarity and key physical characteristics)
Similar Species
Habitat
Season
Comments
Identification is the most crucial element of this section, as it compiles most of the information in one place. Size is a key piece of information in ID'ing dragonflies, since many similar species are different sizes. The thing that I like is that the measurements are in inches, not relative sizes as in the Butterflies book. So species A is 13/8", while species B is 2 1/2" - very specific. It is odd to see things like 1 6/16" - isn't that 1 3/8"? - but that's a minor quibble. The fact that I don't have to find the reference dragonfly is a boon. Point of fact, I would love to have a comparison there, too but given one or the other, I'd prefer a measurement if I can get it. Geographic location - duplicated in the maps on the plates - is more detailed here, but it and rarity are relatively minor in the ID process. The rest of the physical description is where Dunkle really pays off, highlighting important things to look for, particularly those that a person can see through binoculars (or a camera lens) on the fly. He also gives more specific identifiers for those who are practically on top of the dragonflies, but leaves out those things that a normal person would never get a chance to see (such as genitalia, etc.
Similar Species is also a major help, since it gives the user a quick and easy way to know what other dragonflies to quickly compare against. Usually, there is a small "this one has this, as opposed to the [x] that the other species has" so you get some quick hits right there on the page.
Habitat and Season both give great ideas of where to look for the species you are trying to track down - it helps you narrow your search based on where you saw a species (or want to see them), and if they should be around yet/still (another great method to know if you are really seeing that rare species - if it's 3 months too early, probably not).
Comments are usually more information about the species, often quite helpful (this is another spot where the Dragonflies guide packs some more punch than the Butterflies one). With dragonflies, many species have specific ways that they hunt, or certain time periods when they are active, and Dunkle gives great advice with this, telling the reader that a particular species is known for a constant gliding with few stops to perch, or that they are only active at dusk and dawn (so mid-day sightings are not going to happen).
Plates »
One of the best ways to ID a dragonfly - like a butterfly - is through visual means, i.e. a picture. While it's nice to know that the lateral stripes on the abdomen are notched vs. straight, seeing an actual photo of them makes a MUCH easier method to ID a dragonfly. Unfortunately, many dragonflies are ridiculously similar and require more than a picture can tell, hence the text portion of this book. That being said, the photos are a great way to start, and these are as a majority excellent.
Organized in a method that follows the taxonomy of the text portion, it groups together species and genuses, and then groups the dragonflies that share some characteristics together. Sometimes that shared spaced is by physical appearance; other times it's by location (all the same species in a certain region for example). I haven't found the exact method to the madness yet, but it could probably use a little work. In most cases, there are 8 pictures to a plate (on the right-hand side), with the range maps and some helpful text on the left-hand page. When available (and applicable), the book includes images for both the males and females (when they are sexually dimorphic). However, what it doesn't do is offer views of immature variants - although the text is often more than enough to help in this case (assuming you've gotten close).
The text on the left-hand side of the pictures is pretty helpful most times, giving quick hits as to what to look for - makes looking back at the image and finding distinguishing characteristics very easy. And as I said, most of the images are fantastic. The amount of time it must have taken to track down a lot of these images is mind-boggling. One of the other unfortunate aspects of this guide is that some of the pictures are small and lack real sense of some of the key features that you'd like to see visually (although again they are backed up in the text). But having tried to photograph some of these beauties, I can understand why larger/better pictures aren't always available.
At the end of the book, the index acts as an index AND a checklist (with checkboxes next to the common names). Not nearly as convenient as a real checklist but
still a nice touch. One piece that I find daunting is that it does not have anything on damselflies, which are closely related to dragonflies and quite often found in the same places. Unfortunately, there isn't a companion guide for Damselflies - most likely because they are so small and hard to photograph that it would be tough to get enough good shots - not to mention that damselflies seems a lot more variable than their larger Odonata cousins.
[ • is this BOOK FOR YOU? • ]
This book is not something for the casual person checking out that dragonfly in your back yard. Sure it will tell you that, but it is more to help those who are trying to find and ID more species. It tackles dragonflies from throughout North America, so anywhere in the U.S. or Canada can benefit from it - and it's small enough to take with you on hikes/trips (although the covers are more of a home reference than a field guide). It was published in 2000, but I don't know that much has really changed in terms of speciesization of dragonflies - but there could be some out-of-date material, although I've yet to find any. Author Sidney Dunkle knows his stuff and offers up real suggestions that don't sound professor-like as you read them - in fact, he seems to have a little 'professor next-door' feel to him as he goes through his descriptions, the guy up the street who enthralled you as a kid by holding a big, vicious dragonfly (they bite with their tails, right?) in his hands while talking about it.
The pictures are great and offer real opportunities to get an ID from, and are better organized than any other guide I've used. My wife and I have found it completely invaluable at this point, although it doesn't get into the damselflies like I would like. For a mass consumption book (and by mass consumption I mean on a national level, not local), this is the top of the group. There might be some local and regional tomes that do a better job with helping with what you'll find in your local neighborhood, but if you want a one-size fits all nicely book, be sure to give this one a look.
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