Butterflies of Europe (Princeton Field Guides) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the best field guide to European butterflies and not just by default. Although there is currently no other decent European field guide to butterflies, this has undoubtedly set the standard for many years to come.
All 440 species of Europe and North Africa are fully described and illustrated with male and females depicted and - where there is significant variation - subspecies.
The text itself is accurate, concise and oriented at the field observer. A monochrome thumbnail map accompanies the detailed range / distribution section. Under "Description", it is heartening to see comparative comments rather than a re-hashing of what can be seen on the plates - something that used to occur often in field guides. Habitat is described in great detail. Life history includes a list of larval food plants.
The 104 plates do not accompany the text, but are found together in the centre of the book. They are, of course, superb. Extremely lifelike, wonderfully helpful for identification and pleasing to the eye, they are everything we have come to expect from Richard Lewington's brush.
This is a "must have" for anyone travelling to Europe and no British naturalist will want to be without it either. In 1970, Higgins & Riley were the pioneers. This book is the worthy successor to that groundbreaking first guide, taking the art of identification to even higher levels.

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This is the most comprehensive field guide to the butterflies of Europe. The magnificent color illustrations and succinct entries cover all 440 species across, and sometimes beyond, the continent--from Lapland to North Africa, from the British Isles to Portugal to Greece, from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus. Completely up-to-date, the book includes dozens of species absent in earlier guides and covers the Canary Islands, the Azores, Madeira, and the Aegean Islands, home to several butterflies found nowhere else in Europe.The entries cover taxonomic nomenclature, range, distribution, description, flight period, variation, habitat, life history--including, importantly, larval host plants--and behavior. The 104 color plates feature over 2,000 illustrations, including both genders of each species and lateral views. Distribution maps accompany nearly all entries. In this journey to the haunts of the Old World's most kaleidoscopic creatures we encounter: Swallowtails and Festoons, Orange Tips, Hairstreaks and Blues, Emperors and Tortoiseshells, Fritillaries, Ringlets, Skippers, and many other delicately winged delights.All who find butterflies beautiful will treasure this authoritative guide. Whether already afield or still at home dreaming of that trip to Europe, they will feel what the great literary lepidopterist, Vladimir Nabokov, did as a schoolboy in Russia, when, as he once recounted, he so yearned to identify one of those "delicate little creatures that cling in the daytime to speckled surfaces, with which their flat wings and turned-up abdomens blend."
Comprehensive field guide to the 440 butterflies found in Europe
Each species fully illustrated with paintings of the male, female, and, where appropriate, all major forms
Over 2,000 color illustrations and more than 400 distribution maps--one for every widespread species
Text covering taxonomic nomenclature, distribution, flight period, variation, habitat, behavior, life cycle, food plants, and conservation
All information researched from original sources

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