Customer Reviews

Insects of the Pacific Northwest (Timber Press Field Guides)

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

 

 

First of all, I should acknowledge that there are hundreds of thousands of species of insects, and you can't expect a single book to cover all of them, even for a small area of the globe. That said, this book is still woefully lacking any sense of completeness. It seems to have gone overboard in covering "cute" insects (ten full pages of ladybird beetles, about half the book devoted to butterflies and moths), while leaving some things out completely. Earwigs and silverfish, for example, are entirely absent, as are the various aquatic bugs (water striders, backswimmers) that you find swimming on or under the water in most ponds. And while the book claims to cover some non-insect invertebrates, there's no mention whatsoever of pill bugs or even centipedes.

The organization could use some work, too; it's odd that all the families of Lepidoptera are sorted alphabetically, instead of at least divided first into butterflies vs. moths.

On the bright side, the photographs are excellent.

Timber Press is usually pretty dependable when it comes to producing regional field guides and Peter and Judy Haggard's new insect guide certainly qualifies as a nice little regional field guide. When placed in a head-to-head against the Lone Pine analog _Bugs of Oregon and Washington_, it wins hands down (Lone Pine can be pretty hit-or-miss ranging from the indispensable _Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast_ and _Amphibians of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia_ to the down right useless _Birds of the Pacific Northwest Coast_).

Where _Bugs_ comes in at 160 pages with only one critter per page illustrated competently by Ian Sheldon, _Insects_ comes in at 295 pages with photographs of several species per page. The front 20% is beetles, easily the most comprehensive and useful section. It includes many of my favorites (_Calligrapha multipunctata_, _Ellychnia hatchi_) though Rain beetles (_Pleocoma_) and the snail-eating _Scaphinotus_ are curiously absent....

The Lepidoptera section is the largest section and includes plenty of caterpillars. The overly linear may find the sorted-by-size format that mixes the moths with the butterflies and discards taxonomic formalities a bit frustrating. There is, however, a key at the front that most non-entemologists will have no trouble using to navigate and since we non-entemologists have no expectations about what the order should be it's okay.

The most interesting section has photos of insect galls from wasps and gall midges. Dragonflies, true flies and most aquatic species (mayflies, stoneflies, etc) are woefully under represented and one gets the impression that the authors just left out species that were too hard to photograph or weren't particularly photogenic. The non-insect invertebrates section seems almost tacked on as an after-thought.

I'm sure that entemology purists will find plenty to complain about, just as ornithology purists complain about what's missing in bird guides and botany purists complain about omissions in plant guides, but for the rest of us- a regional guide with at least 100 beetle photographs will prove to be well worth buying. If Amazon allowed half stars, I'd rate this a 3.5, but since they don't, I'll round up to 4...

Perhaps a good start, but by no means a comprehensive guide. It tends to put more emphasis on more popular insects, like butterflies, instead of the more common ones, like beetles.

Not a terrible book, but like the other reviews point out, it is sadly lacking anything other than butterflies. Beetles may be the exception, but even then it is still just ok. If I hadn't used a gift card to buy this I would probably return it as it is NOT worth the ~$20 they want for it... In short buy it second hand if you really want it... or buy a butterfly book... at least there will be a reason it omits all the other orders...

This book is fabulous for Humboldt County and almost as good for Mendocino County because it is so specific for this area. Most books of this nature are not specific to the northcoast of CA. The photographs are fabulous. And one thing I like is that it is not limited to the normal insects. It has galls caused by insects and some of the spiders, etc. Great job.

Dave Bengston

The book is in great shape, got here on time. Not really recommend the book. Compared to other insect field guides/information guides this book is not great. The pictures are amazing, but small. There are a lot of species in this book not found in other field guides, but very little information is given about them. I love the personal notes the author and her husband has with each insect! :-) But, overall can not see much use out of this book. Some sections have one example. I thought it could have used a lot more examples and info in each order.

This is a very comprehensive, well photographed book. I even found all the oak galls I have on my property. I initially ordered this as a christmas present, and liked it so much I ordered one for myself.