A watercolour painting executed by the Dutch painter Rochus van Veen in 1681 and held in the Getty Museum, Alabama, depicting, in exquisite detail, two males of Libellula quadrimaculata and one male of L. depressa, is presented and discussed. The specimens were obtained in May 1681 during the first documented mass migration of dragonflies in the Netherlands. Other records of early dragonfly migrations are noted.

During an 11-day birdwatching trip in coastal Mauritania (West Africa) we recorded 18 species of Odonata, including two identified only to genus. Five of these are new to Mauritania: Ceriagrion glabrum / suave, Pseudagrion sp., Rhyothemis semihyalina, Tholymis tillarga and Trithemis hecate. We report the first Mauritanian records of Acisoma inflatum, Orthetrum trinacria and Urothemis edwardsii for almost 50 years. At Plage de Ghara we found dead or dying dragonflies of 10 different species on a beach. In pellets of the Blue-cheeked Bee-eater found near a small pond south of Tamxat, Odonata made up 33.6 % of food items.

We compared the adult odonate communities in primary and secondary cloud forest sites at the Santa Elena Preserve in Monteverde, Costa Rica, during seven weekly visits from April to June 2023. There were no significant differences between primary and secondary forest sites in mean odonate abundance/site, mean abundance of each species/site, ACE incidence-based estimated species richness, or Chao estimated Shannon Diversity. Pairwise community similarity values were calculated among all sites and sites within forest types were no more similar than sites from different forests. Similarity was not correlated with horizontal or elevational distances between sites in partial correlations. Community composition did not vary between secondary and primary forest sites in NMDS and PERMANOVA analyses. The adult odonate communities in primary and secondary forests were nearly indistinguishable, suggesting a recovery of odonate communities in this abutting 30-year-old secondary forest.

A list of 25 species found in three new localities, including five new records for Zacatecas State, Mexico, is provided. Enallagma novaehispaniae, Protoneura cara, Celithemis eponina, Paltothemis lineatipes, and Tauriphila australis are recorded for the first time, increasing to 51 the number of species for this state.

A breeding population of Orthetrum ransonnetii (Desert Skimmer, Desert Basker, Ransonnet's Skimmer, etc.) is here reported from 1 500–1 800 m in the granite mountains of north-western Saudi Arabia in early February 2024. This eremic species has a vast range in the arid regions from the Canary Islands across North Africa and Arabia to south-west Asia, but its occurrence is patchy, with long series of records from the Dead Sea Rift Valley and the Sinai Peninsula, the Hajar Mountains of the United Arab Emirates and northern Oman, and the north-west and central Sahara in Morocco and Algeria, but limited records from the remainder of its range and only a single previous record from Saudi Arabia. The wintertime high-elevation records discussed here fill a large observational gap within the species' distribution range and provide additional evidence for the recently recognised ecological plasticity of the species.

During a survey of odonates along the river Wadi Boulahdaid in the north-east of Algeria, a new population of the large red damselfly, Pyrrhosoma cf. nymphula,was recorded. This stream had not been explored in previous odonatological studies in Algeria. The population displayed a range of reproductive behaviours, from copulation and oviposition to territoriality, which suggests local establishment. This finding adds a new locality within the previously known North African range of this taxon, which runs from northern and western Morocco to Tunisia through the Rif Mountains, the High and Middle Atlas and the Tell Atlas orographic system. It contributes to an improved understanding of the North African odonate fauna.