Customer Reviews

Caterpillars of Eastern North America: A Guide to Identification and Natural History (Princeton Field Guides)

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a fabulous work! No idea how Amazon, or the publisher, can make any money at this price...especially with over 1,200 color photos and over 500 pages long! Every photo is large and in perfect focus. Note that the bindings on the hardcover are much better than the paperback (I bought one of each) so I would suggest springing for the hardcover, as you will use this book a lot! Because Dr. Wagner has raised most of the species in this book, there is a ton of information on how to find a species, what to feed it, notes on strange behaviors...every page is a pleasure to read. I have worked in entomology for 20 years and I will always treasure this book. I tested this book on a 10 year old and she could ID caterpillars pretty well with it...but if you read this book from cover to cover it would be like getting a Ph D in caterpillars. Extremely easy read, and a pleasure to use. This book will do for caterpillars what Rodger Tory Peterson did for birds! Five stars plus!

Moth caterpillars are more numerous (moth species outnumber butterfly species 10 to one), but books to help you identify these are rare to say the least, and most of those that do cover moths as well as butterflies are both very technical and expensive. "Caterpillars of Eastern North America: A Guide to Identification and Natural History" fills the need (for the eastern part of the continent at least) for a reasonably comprehensive guide to both moth and butterfly larvae, with the moths not shortchanged. It can be helpful to a degree in the west as well, but I hope a western guide will soon grace the book stores. We still have no Peterson guide to western moths to match the eastern one!

The color photos are beautiful and the text informative. A perfect book to help the naturalist or anybody who is curious about the "worms" in their garden. I recommend it highly.

Not too long ago in human history, people thought that caterpillars and butterflies were two entirely different critters. This book illustrates beautifully how different the pupual stage of the butterfly is from the adult! So many of us can identify a Monarch caterpillar, but how about a swallowtail or a sulphur? And, yeah, you know what a Gypsy Moth caterpillar looks like, and maybe even a Wooly Bear, but what do they TURN INTO?

The pictures in this book will tell you! I'll say that this book isn't for the rank beginner, they'd probably do better with "Caterpillars in the Field and Garden : A Field Guide to the Butterfly Caterpillars of North America". And neither is it a definitive guide to all the caterpillars (that book has yet to be written). But it fits the niche right in-between. The pictures of the caterpillars are great; true to life and color, although the adult pictures are small, taken from pinned, collected adults, which makes for sometimes faded specimens and could never be used as a field guide as most of the moths never fan their wings.

Moths are the primary reason to buy this book. If you've ever found a caterpillar in your garden and just don't know what it is, it's just as likely (if not sometimes more so) to be a moth as a butterfly. The beginner books don't include many moths, despite the fact that moth caterpillars can be just as colorful, and large!

The author gives a summary on each page of the more common species, what they look like, whether instars are different from stage to stage, range maps, and most importantly: WHAT THEY EAT. I'm not talking about whether you have to worry about finding these guys on your tomatoes, or in your cereal cabinet. Caterpillar species specialize on a certain type of food plant or plants. Sometimes the ONLY way to tell two species apart is to see what the caterpillar eats.

The tips in this book will help you on your way to raise caterpillars at home, find eggs on plants, even identify some common diseases and parasites.

Aspiring lepidopterists will find this book useful to move from novices to informed backyard naturalists.

This is a terrific field guide. 700 species of caterpillars of butterflies and moths are represented. All the moth caterpillars that you can't find anywhere else are in this book! Great photos, good organization. Lots of other helpful information is included, like habitat, common food plants, geographic distribution, and when they occur. Highly Recommended!

This is probably one of the most useful and complete field guides, in any category, I have ever used. The 1000 plus photographs alone, are of such quality that they become almost works of art. Clear and very usable. I do a tremendous amount of photography of wildlife, flowere, insects, snakes, and all sorts of other critters. This is one of the field guides I always have handy, as it makes identification so very, very much easier. The book is well designed in that it is rather easy to find what you are looking for. Like another reviewer, I might suggest you go ahead and get the hard cover as it will last longer and this is certainly a book you will be using a lot if this is in an area of your interest. I do wish that all field guides, not matter what genre, could be of this quality and usefulness. Recommend this one quite highly.

David Wagner's "Caterpillars of Eastern North America" is FANTASTIC. It is WONDERFUL. It is a MUST addition to your libraries. It's almost enough to make botanists give up plants and start looking for caterpillars. It's almost enough to make Auduboners give up bird watching and start looking for caterpillars. I am not kidding. I've already used it to identify the Canadian owlet, Calyptra canadensis, larvae eating the meadow rue in the prairie.

It is an amazing book with great photos and plenty of information. I cannot believe the amount of time, effort and work that went into this book. I "must" find some slug caterpillars. Buy this book and you won't have to turn on the TV for weeks!

I echo all of the favorable comments in the other reviews. This book has the best photos I've seen in any field guide of any kind. Shows not only the caterpillar but the resulting butterfly or moth - and, so, can also be helpful with moth identification due to the dearth of other publications on moths. This book covers a wide spectrum of caterpillars and should make it easy for anyone to identify them.

This is the best caterpillar identification book I have seen. It not only identifies more caterpillars than I knew lived in the eastern part of North America but also has pictures of the moth or butterfly that they turn into making it a good source for identifying them. This is a must for anyone interested in moths or butterflies of this area.

This meticulously detailed book belongs on every curious naturalist's bookshelf. Wonderful photographs, and rare background information on how they were taken, helps to simplify caterpillar identification. With a good hand lens and Wagner's book, you'll be beating the bushes (and trees) for new specimens. In addition to Wagner's, there are lots of other great brains behind these pages, which shows in the credits and in the book's overall quality. Congratulations to all on a superb job. Highly recommended.

I'm a 4-H entomology leader in Michigan, and I do not think I can explain how frustrating it has been trying to glean information about lepidoptera larvae for my charges. Then, WHAM ! Wagner's book is clear, concise, and jam-packed with beautiful photos and illustrations. Most importantly, my 10-year-old charges find the larvae they find without any help from me. WAY COOL !