47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Practical and well-designed, June 23, 2003
This review is from: Butterflies of North America (Kaufman Focus Guides) (Paperback)
The latest Kaufman Focus Guide, designed for beginners, features a pictorial table of contents, a primer on identification and habitat, butterfly lifecycle and where to find the critters, other butterfly activities, such as gardening and photography, and further sources of information, such as books, websites and organizations. It concludes with an index of larval food plants, an index of scientific names, an index of English names which doubles as a life list and a final one-page quick-find, color-coded index.
In between are 2,300 digitally edited photographs, which have the easy-comparison advantages of paintings, and concise descriptions, with range map and primary larval foodplant. Each page of illustrations also includes an "actual size" figure, which is amazingly useful in the field. Similar species are grouped together for convenient comparison.
This is another practical, well-designed and beautiful addition to the Focus Guide series.
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE one volume field guide to North America's butterflies - and great for beginners!, May 3, 2006
This review is from: Butterflies of North America (Kaufman Focus Guides) (Paperback)
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 one of the 650 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).
As for caterpillar identification, that is a whole new can of worms and would probably made this book twice as big, not to mention twice as long to write! My feeling is that it may be better to keep the two stages apart and interested readers should refer to the newish "Caterpillars in the Field and Garden : A Field Guide to the Butterfly Caterpillars of North America" (on Amazon: ISBN 0195149874).
The Kaufman Guides are a wonderful series - let's hope they keep expanding to cover new subjects.
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for butterfly Watchers. But, no caterpillar pictures, August 9, 2004
This review is from: Butterflies of North America (Kaufman Focus Guides) (Paperback)
I agree with the other reviewers who rated this reference book. It's got thousands of accurate butterfly pictures and it's loaded with information. Unfortunately, I was looking for a book that had a picture of the caterpillar beside each butterfly. This book does not and I am still looking for a book that does. Don't buy it if you need larval stage pictures. This book does not have those pictures.
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