Mostly black in colour, the male common hawker has pale blue spots and yellow flecks all along the body, dark blue eyes and pale yellow and blue patches on the thorax. The female has yellowish spots and brownish eyes. The black-and-blue hawkers are a tricky group of dragonflies to identify. The common hawker is larger and darker than the migrant hawker, lacks the lime green spots of the southern hawker and has more black and less blue than the rare azure hawker of northern Scotland. All the spots on the common hawker are separated whereas the spots on S8-10 on the southern hawker are joined.