6 Types of Dragonflies in Europe: From Hawkers to the Emperor Dragonfly

Across Europe’s canals, fens and slow-moving rivers, dragonflies are often the clearest sign that a wetland is doing well. According to the Publications Office of the European Union, these insects are perhaps the most charismatic, striking and instantly recognisable taxon of all European aquatic invertebrates, and their sensitivity to water quality makes them valuable indicators of ecosystem health. The same report describes them as the “Guardians of the Watershed”, a title that fits once you start watching them work a pond edge.

The types of dragonflies in Europe fall into a handful of recognizable groups long before you ever need a field guide to sort out individual species. Hawkers patrol on the wing for minutes at a stretch, chasers and skimmers perch and dart, and darters bask low over paths and fence posts. This guide walks through those four groups and then zooms in on two of the continent’s most familiar species, the common darter and the emperor dragonfly.

Pro Tip: Watch flight behavior before worrying about color. Continuous patrolling almost always means a hawker, while short darting flights from a fixed perch point to a chaser, skimmer, or darter.

Hawkers

Hawkers belong to the family Aeshnidae and are the marathon runners of the dragonfly world. Rather than perching and waiting, most species fly long, repeated circuits over water and only rest by hanging vertically from tall vegetation. Their large compound eyes meet at the top of the head, giving them near-360-degree vision while hunting midges and mosquitoes on the wing.

1. Southern Hawker
2. Migrant Hawker
3. Brown Hawker
4. Common Hawker
5. Norfolk Hawker

The southern hawker (Aeshna cyanea) is one of the easiest hawkers to observe up close. Naturalists at Bredfield Wildlife note that the southern hawker is extremely inquisitive and will often fly very close to a person’s head to inspect them, a habit that makes it a garden pond favorite across much of central and western Europe.

The migrant hawker (Aeshna mixta) is smaller and more slender than most relatives in its genus, and it tends to appear later in the season, often forming loose late-summer swarms far from open water. The brown hawker (Aeshna grandis) is easier to pick out by wing color alone: brown hawker dragonflies are large and mostly brown with golden-washed wings, with two yellow stripes on the thorax and blue spots on the body.

The common hawker (Aeshna juncea), sometimes called the moorland hawker, favors acidic pools on heaths and bogs rather than lowland ponds. The Norfolk hawker (Aeshna isosceles) is the rarest of the group, restricted largely to fen ditches in eastern England and scattered wetlands on the near continent, and it stands out with bright green eyes rather than the blue seen in most hawkers.

Chasers

Chasers, skimmers, and darters all sit within Libellulidae, Europe’s largest dragonfly family. Body size across the family varies enormously: specialists at Bumblebee.org record that adult body length in Europe ranges from 18 to 75 millimetres, with a wingspan of 40 to 80 millimetres.

Within that family, chasers form a small but distinctive genus. As detailed on Nature Journeys, the genus Libellula is represented in Britain by three species: Libellula depressa, the broad-bodied chaser, Libellula fulva, the scarce chaser, and Libellula quadrimaculata, the four-spotted chaser, and the same three turn up widely across the rest of Europe.

1. Broad-bodied Chaser
2. Four-spotted Chaser
3. Scarce Chaser

The broad-bodied chaser is unmistakable once you know what to look for. Field notes from the Canal & River Trust describe how the broad-bodied chaser is distinguished by its wide and flat abdomen, blue in males and yellow-brown in females, with dark markings at the wing bases. It is often the first chaser to colonize a brand-new garden pond.

The four-spotted chaser earns its name from the dark spot at the midpoint of each wing, and according to Wikipedia, this species is known in Europe as the four-spotted chaser and in North America as the four-spotted skimmer. The Canal & River Trust adds that four-spotted chasers are mostly brown with a black tip to the tail and yellow sides, and they are active creatures that hunt over water or mark their territory. The scarce chaser (Libellula fulva) is the trickiest of the three to find, preferring slow, reed-fringed rivers rather than still ponds, and mature males develop a powdery blue abdomen with sharply contrasting black wingtips.

Skimmers

Skimmers share the perch-and-dart hunting style of chasers but belong to a different genus entirely. Per Nature Journeys, the genus Orthetrum is called skimmers across Europe and North America, represented in Britain by the black-tailed skimmer and the keeled skimmer, out of 67 species worldwide.

1. Black-tailed Skimmer
2. Keeled Skimmer

The black-tailed skimmer (Orthetrum cancellatum) is the more widespread of the two and favors open, sunny stretches of water with bare margins for basking. The Canal & River Trust notes that black-tailed skimmer dragonflies have clear wing bases and a tapered abdomen, with males blue with black tips and females yellow with black stripes, and both sexes have dulled green eyes. Larvae take their time to mature, and the same source records that the larvae can take several years to mature before adults finally emerge.

The keeled skimmer (Orthetrum coerulescens) is smaller and noticeably more powdery blue overall, without the sharp black wingtips of the black-tailed species. It favors acidic, boggy streams and flushes on heathland rather than the open lakes and canals preferred by its relative, making habitat almost as useful as color for telling the two apart.

Darters

Darters round out the Libellulidae trio and are named for their short, sudden flights from a favorite perch. The genus carries the same common name across much of the continent: Wikipedia confirms that Sympetrum is known as darters in Europe and meadowhawks in North America, with more than 50 species worldwide and 11 native to Europe. In Britain alone, Nature Journeys counts seven Sympetrum species.

1. Common Darter
2. Black Darter
3. Red-veined Darter
4. Vagrant Darter
5. Yellow-winged Darter

The common darter gets a full profile of its own further down this guide. The black darter (Sympetrum danae) is the smallest of the group; the Canal & River Trust describes how black darter dragonflies are small and black with yellow markings, and females are more yellow all over, and notes that black darter dragonflies are the smallest dragonfly in the UK. The red-veined darter (Sympetrum fonscolombii) is a strong migrant that can turn up hundreds of kilometres from its usual Mediterranean range in a single warm summer.

Important Note: Darter species are notoriously difficult to separate in the field. As iNaturalist observes, Sympetrum species are not easy to tell apart, and in most areas more than one Sympetrum species will occur, so leg markings and pterostigma color are often more reliable than overall body tone.

Common darter

The common darter (Sympetrum striolatum) is arguably the default dragonfly of a European late summer, turning up on fence posts, gravel paths and warm paving long after other species have finished their season. Wikipedia describes it as a dragonfly of the family Libellulidae native to Eurasia, one of the most common dragonflies in Europe, occurring in a wide variety of water bodies with a preference for still water such as ponds and lakes.

1. Size and Coloration
2. Flight Season
3. Habitat
4. Look-Alike Species

Common darters are compact insects: the Wildlife Trusts record a body length of 3.8 to 4.3 centimetres. Color shifts with age and sex, and iNaturalist notes that females and teneral individuals have a light yellow thorax and abdomen, while males turn red as they mature. A diagnostic detail worth remembering: the legs have a cream or yellow stripe on a black background in all common darters, regardless of age or sex.

Flight season stretches well into autumn. According to First Nature, adults can be seen on the wing from late June until the end of October, sometimes into November, and in southern Europe they may fly throughout the year. This species tolerates cooler weather better than most Libellulidae, often the last dragonfly still active on a mild autumn afternoon.

Habitat preferences are broad, which explains why the common darter turns up almost everywhere with standing or slow-moving water. First Nature notes that it is plentiful across mainland Europe, Asia and North Africa, favoring shallow lakes, small ponds and other still or very slow-flowing water. The closest look-alike is the ruddy darter, and NatureSpot points out that the ruddy darter has a waisted abdomen and all-black legs, while the common darter has yellow stripes on the legs, a distinction that settles most identification disputes on the spot.

Emperor dragonfly

The emperor dragonfly (Anax imperator) belongs to the same hawker family as the species covered earlier, but its size and territorial behavior set it apart from every other Aeshnid on this list. Wikipedia notes that it is the largest dragonfly in most of Europe, including the United Kingdom, although exceeded in some areas by other species.

1. Size and Wingspan
2. Coloration
3. Habitat and Behavior

Scale is the emperor’s most obvious feature. According to Animal Corner, the emperor dragonfly has the largest wingspan of any dragonfly in the British Isles, measuring 10.5 centimetres long, and the same source classifies it as a large and powerful species of European hawker dragonfly within the family Aeshnidae. Males show a vivid sky-blue abdomen with a dark dorsal stripe, while females and immature males lean more toward green, giving rise to the alternate name “blue emperor” used in some regional guides.

Behaviorally, the emperor is a fierce, low-patrolling hunter that rarely stops moving over open water. Adults defend a stretch of pond or canal for hours at a time, chasing off rivals and snatching prey mid-air, including smaller dragonflies and damselflies. Ponds with plenty of open water and marginal vegetation for egg-laying, rather than dense reed beds, tend to attract the largest numbers.

Pro Tip: Look for emperor dragonflies at the sunniest, most open edge of a pond in midsummer. Their size and constant low patrolling make them easy to spot even from a distance, long before smaller species become visible.

Learning to sort hawkers, chasers, skimmers and darters by flight style and perch habits turns a confusing blur of wings into a short, manageable checklist. Add the common darter and emperor dragonfly as reference points, and most pond-side sightings across Europe become straightforward to place within minutes. For deeper identification work, resources like the British Dragonfly Society’s field guide and the searchable species checklist at Dragonflies Online cover the full continental list in far more detail than any single article can manage.