Finally, after seven years of trying, we managed to visit New Zealand in November 2017 for four weeks. This was not an odonata hunting trip but a general tourism and landscape visit, touring New Zealand in a campervan. Odonata spotting was opportunistic en route.
Odonata finds were always going to be limited. Firstly, New Zealand has a paucity of overall species – a mere 17 in total of which 2 are migrants/vagrants and 2 more are in very specific geographical locations. Secondly, we were very early in the NZ flight season so only the spring species might be on offer. I thought I had 8 potential targets. I did see 7 species, 5 from my hit list and 2 that were not (they seemed to be flying earlier than my information would have had me believe.
Here’s the map of those that we did encounter and where.