Black Percher
(Diplacodes lefebvrii)

With its slim build and a body length of about 28 mm, the Black Percher is Europe's smallest dragonfly. In fact, when we saw it flying side by side with an Ischnura damselfly, it looked positively minuscule. Diplacodes lefebvrii is a rare species in Europe and is restricted to coastal areas in Spain and Portugal. Adult males are all glossy black except for the brownish eyes, the upper appendages (which tend to stay white) and a small yellow patch at the base of the hindwing. Immature males sport the same colours as mature females, i.e. black with yellow patches on the side of the thorax and the top of the abdomen, and again a yellow patch in the hindwing and white appendages. Rather confusingly, old females also appear all black, thus resembling adult males, but their colour tends to be a muted rather than glossy black.

For an overview of the Black Percher's distribution in Europe, hover your mouse pointer over the map symbol .
With the authors' permission we have based this map on data published in Kalkman et al. (2010).
Legend: Red = Occurs, White = Doesn't occur; Purple = Extinct; Yellow = Vagrant.

Hover your mouse pointer over a thumbnail below to display a larger version of it. Or click on a thumbnail to display the photograph (at 1050 x 700 pixels) in a new window. And then, if you'd like to get even closer, you can drag the ZoomBox from the top-left corner of that window across the photograph. Note that you may have to refresh the window manually (by pressing F5 on your keyboard) for the ZoomBox to display correctly.