A Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America
By Jeffrey Goldberg. Princeton Press. Princeton, NJ. 2017. 420 pages. $29.95.
If you travel outside your local region within North America, and you are interested in Butterflies, at least you have a single volume reference that is brilliant and up-to-date. Most previous guides I’ve seen focus on the standard open-winged images. We all know from experience that butterflies can alight and sit motionless for long minutes, with their wings in upright, locked position. And if you;re trying for a photo they may only open their wings for an instantaneous flutter, then upright and uptight again. Well this book cleverly has shots of those upright wings for each species.
Best of all for us birders…is the thumbnail photo index in the back. I know my swift from my nighthawk, my sparrow from my warbler…but with butterflies clans…I’m lost so I often end up going through my previous guides one page at a time…this index will end that madness. Here is one of the three handy visual index pages:
Leave a Reply