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| Butterflies of North America (Kaufman Field Guides) | 
| Author: Jim P. Brock
Creator: Kenn Kaufman
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.65
You Save: $7.30 (37%)
New (19) from $12.65
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 58073
Media: Vinyl Bound
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 392
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 4.8 x 1
ISBN: 0618768262
Dewey Decimal Number: 595.789097
EAN: 9780618768264
ASIN: 0618768262
Publication Date: September 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Absolutely Brand New & In Stock. 100% 30-Day Money Back. Direct from our warehouse. Ships by USPS. 1+ million customers served-In business since 1986. Happy Customers is Our #1 Goal. Toll Free Support
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| Customer Reviews:
 Well organized reference August 23, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This reference is easily used by a beginning non-professional as it contains the information in one place (unlike Peterson). Wish it had included the Caterpillar stages, but I suppose that is the topic for another reference source.
 THE one volume field guide to North America's butterflies - and great for beginners! May 3, 2006
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
According to the preface, Kaufman Guides are "the best and fastest way to get started... to send you outside quickly, putting names on what you find". That was certainly true of the "Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America". Does it work here too?
Firstly, this is the only true field guide to cover every one of the 650 species regularly occurring north of the US-Mexican border. Other comprehensive books exist, like Scott's wonderful "The Butterflies of North America: A Natural History and Field Guide" (on Amazon: ISBN 0804720134), but they are really too heavy and not designed for the field. In contrast, this book is about the same size and shape as the well-known Peterson Field Guides, but with a hardier, flexible cover.
Unlike most Peterson Field Guides, however, the facing-page format allows illustrations, text, and map for each butterfly to be viewed simultaneously at one opening of the book. That is a major advantage. As for the illustrations, Kaufman opts for digitally enhanced photographs over paintings. There are more than 2,200 depictions of butterflies in natural conditions, all of them processed digital images based on photographs of live animals. The plates show the uppersides and undersides of most butterflies, both sexes are illustrated where they differ markedly, and regionally distinct forms are shown too. Range maps show where each species is common or rare and at what time of year.
At the end of the day this is a very welcome addition to the field guide literature and perhaps THE book to take into the field for identifying these insects, especially for beginners. Having said that, I would not be without the superb Peterson Field Guides "A Field Guide to Western Butterflies" and "A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies" (on Amazon: ISBN 0395791529 & ISBN 0395904536 respectively) or the relevant volume of "Butterflies through Binoculars: The West" or "Butterflies through Binoculars: The East" (on Amazon: ISBN 0195106695 & ISBN 0195106687 respectively).
As for caterpillar identification, that is a whole new can of worms and would probably made this book twice as big, not to mention twice as long to write! My feeling is that it may be better to keep the two stages apart and interested readers should refer to the newish "Caterpillars in the Field and Garden : A Field Guide to the Butterfly Caterpillars of North America" (on Amazon: ISBN 0195149874).
The Kaufman Guides are a wonderful series - let's hope they keep expanding to cover new subjects.
The Ultimate Book For Easy Identification for Beginners April 21, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
There is one big problem with all Kaufman Focus Guides - they don't make a broad enough line of them! If I were able to have only 1 book on a given subject (birds, butterflies, mammals, etc.) I would always choose the Kaufman Focus Guide. I find their excellent pictures far superior to the illustrations that most books use, for one thing.
I shoot a lot of nature pictures and wanted to identify the butterfly and moth shots I was getting. I have several other guides - National Audubon Field Guide to Insects & Spiders - Golden Guide to Butterflies & Moths, Peterson First Guide to Butterflies & Moths. But the Kaufman book makes it easy to find and identify a species and to find the very subtle differences between very similar butterflies.
The pictorial table of contents makes it easy to understand various groupings of butterflies. I saw one review critical for the taxonomic system the book uses... the relevant thing for me, as an amateur, was to be able to quickly and easily make an identification and to have accurate information to distinguish between many different butterflies that look very much alike. This book definitely fills the bill. As another reviewer mentioned, it would certainly have been nice to have caterpillars included - but few things are perfect.
If you just want to identify butterflies - this is the book to get!
 Butterflies of North America March 2, 2006
2 out of 12 found this review helpful
It is not a good book because it uses NABA Taxonomic System instead of Lineus. It is missing manny information about the habitat, size, colours and their caterpillar.
Butterflies September 30, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I checked out this book at the library so many times I thought I'd better get one of my own. Found it for the right price at Amazon.com. It's an excellent butterfly book for the novice identifying butterflies of North America.
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