A Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies

Excellent guide to the butterflies of the Eastern US. The guide goes over photography, butterfly habits, and collecting/raising butterflies. The drawings allow for easy identification of butterflies by displaying distinctive differences. I find the drawings to work much better than photographs taken in the wild. There is more information that can be added to book (larvae, pupae etc.) but given its size, it would be near impossible.

I have the 1960's edition of this book also. One thing that makes the Peterson Field Guide Series books so terrific is that they are updated every few years. Several "new to the USA species" have shown up in the past 40 years. Most have migrated here from Mexico. All of the Peterson Field Guide books are beautifuly done. The color photos and drawings are wonderful, as well as the maps. I would also recommend that you buy the Guide to the Western species.

Easy to use, with beautiful color pictures of real butterflies. Small enough to take with you butterfly watching.

I got this from my son who needed a field guide to take to the park and forests. He loves it and so do I. Before we had borrowed our local libraries' 1950 edition of butterfly field guild. What an improvement! Unlike some people we just love it. The pictures are easy to use in the open where you can just notice a few things before whats being observed takes off flying. Opler is very good at listing the most obvious ID factors for each species. And it fits great in a back pack!

The maps in this book are a useful feature, but they are not provided for many of the species. The colour plates are very disappointing, as they often show only one gender of the butterflies and also ignore various subspecies and geographical variations. As the plates are made up drawings, it is often hard to identify species using this field guide, and the reader is left guessing as only the most common variation is shown. The text is quite well done, but moreadditions and details can be made. This book is hardly good as a main field guide (I greatly recommend "The butterflies of North America: a natural history and field Guide" by James A. Scott -- by far the best single-volume guide to American Butterflies), but it is useful as a pocket book that is light and does not take up much space.