It's great to meet you reader! Well, you obviously share a passion
with me for butterfly books, and I appreciate that. You see I've
been mad about books for years; I've been interested in
butterflies since I was a child. Putting the two together means I
get twice the fun when reading books about butterflies. I guess
that means you probably do too!
Since butterflies are such a visual thing, glossy book containing
photographs of the splendid little butterfly are such a treat. The
books generally tend to fall into two camps:
- field guides
- coffee table books
Butterfly field guides are great for identifying butterflies in nature
or in your back garden. They tend to be on the smaller scale in size
and weight so that carrying them around is so much easier. I
usually carry one in my back pack whenever I go walking in the
summer. These butterfly books display a range of butterflies for a
particular region, using either photographs or finely detailed
paintings.
Written details will often include habitats, markings, distribution
and when they can be seen. They will sometimes include
information on foodplants for the butterfly. This will help you
identify if an area is suitable for supporting certain species of
butterfly, after all, without that particular plant or plants (and they
are usually restricted to a very small number of plants) the
butterfly will not survive.
Coffee table butterfly books? I have to say I much prefer these
type of books. Well they are designed to be visually exciting aren't
they? I have to admit to owning a number of them! Everything
from the artistic to the scientific. They tend to be a lot more
expensive so I make a habit of keeping a number of butterfly
books on my general pressies list when people ask for them.
There's another market for books on butterflies you may not have
have considered - the second hand market. There's a wealth of
books available out there and many of them are real gems. In
particular I am referring to very old books written between say
1860 and 1910. This was a time when butterflies of all types were
quite common and easy to observe and lots of books were written
by would-be butterfly collectors of the day.
You can gather a lot of fascinating information in these
href="http://www.butterflycabi.net/butterfly-books/">butterfly
books as they were written in a completely different style to
that of today. They talked about a lot of the detail when finding
and chasing butterflies in the field and gives an insight into the
social history of the day. There are a lot of butterfly identification
books written in the 20th century which resemble coffee table
books and are still highly relevant. The only differences are that a
few of the butterflies may now be extinct, but otherwise they are
still good to use. Worth checking out when you are next in a
second hand bookshop.
