Pieter van Dokkum

Lovely tribute

Disclosure: dragonflies are now and have always been my favorite insects. I remember dragonflies landing on my arms or hands or legs, lowering their wings and sharing the warmth of my skin on cool August afternoon. I remember them allowing me to get right in their faces with a macro lens and letting me snap a photo of their gigantic, panoramic eyes. Or coming down over them to get a close-up of their stained glass wings. I adore watching them hover and suddenly backflip and snatch a fly and come back to position to eat it in the air right in front of me. Any book that documents their lifecycle with spectacular close-ups will win favor with me.

Unlike cuddly mammals, insect babies are not cute. But it is most fascinating to learn how the dragonfly morphs into its adult state all in the course of one night, (relatively) safe from birds and other predators in the dark. Van Dokkum even has underwater shots of dragonfly nymphs, wingless, totally unrecognizable, nowhere near the masters of the sky they will become, if they survive defenseless under water.

This is a coffee table book, not meant to cover all 450 types of dragonfly in the USA, let alone the thousands worldwide. But it is a colorful tribute to a versatile, ancient, and most beneficial component of our existence.

David Wineberg… (meer)