Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #119599 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Vinyl Bound
• 392 pages

Customer Reviews

THE one volume field guide to North America's butterflies
According to the preface, Kaufman Guides are "the best and fastest way to get started... to send you outside quickly, putting names on what you find". That was certainly true of the "Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America". Does it work here too?

Firstly, this is the only true field guide to cover every species regularly occurring north of the US-Mexican border. Other comprehensive books exist, like Scott's wonderful "The Butterflies of North America: A Natural History and Field Guide" (on Amazon: ISBN 0804720134), but they are really too heavy and not designed for the field. In contrast, this book is about the same size and shape as the well-known Peterson Field Guides, but with a hardier, flexible cover.

Unlike most Peterson Field Guides, however, the facing-page format allows illustrations, text, and map for each butterfly to be viewed simultaneously at one opening of the book. That is a major advantage. As for the illustrations, Kaufman opts for digitally enhanced photographs over paintings. There are more than 2,200 depictions of butterflies in natural conditions, all of them processed digital images based on photographs of live animals. The plates show the uppersides and undersides of most butterflies, both sexes are illustrated where they differ markedly, and regionally distinct forms are shown too. Range maps show where each species is common or rare and at what time of year.

At the end of the day this is a very welcome addition to the field guide literature and perhaps THE book to take into the field for identifying these insects, especially for beginners. Having said that, I would not be without the superb Peterson Field Guides "A Field Guide to Western Butterflies" and "A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies" (on Amazon: ISBN 0395791529 & ISBN 0395904536 respectively) or the relevant volume of "Butterflies through Binoculars: The West" or "Butterflies through Binoculars: The East" (on Amazon: ISBN 0195106695 & ISBN 0195106687 respectively).