Photographic Guide to Butterflies of Britain and Europe

This photographic guide to butterflies is aimed at those who wish to find and identify butterflies encountered in the field quickly and easily while promoting their conservation. The text is arranged alongside the colour illustrations of the butterflies and a map to show the distribution of butterflies in Europe. The text itself deliberately focuses on features that complement the photographs and facilitate identification. All the photographs of living butterflies are photographed in the positions in which they will be found in nature – if a butterfly only perches with its wings outspread, that is how it appears in the book; if a butterfly may perch either with its wings spread or folded, both views are shown. Stress is laid on the importance of exploiting all available information for locating and identifying butterflies – if two butterfly species look so similar that they cannot be identified without handling or dissection, the two species are distinguished by behavioural, geographical, or seasonal features in the text.