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Photographic Guide to the Butterflies of Britain and Europe

By (author) Tom Tolman

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This photographic guide to butterflies represents a completely new approach to field guides. It is aimed at those who wish to find and identify butterflies encountered in the field quickly and easily while promoting their conservation. Full colour throughout the book allows the text to arranged alongside the illustrations of the butterflies and a map to show the distribution of the butterflies in Europe. The text itself deliberately focuses on features that complement the photographs and facilitate identification. All the photographs of living butterflies 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. This maximises the number of photographs available to illustrate different positions, regional variations, and sex differences. This is the only guide that covers the whole of Europe, including the Canaries, Azores, Madeira, and all the Aegean islands. It contains numerous unique photographs of species, subspecies, and forms and information about their biology that has never been published before. By providing information about the ecology and conservation status of the butterflies, readers will be encouraged to observe carefully and understand the importance of protecting habitats for the sake f the butterflies, and other organisms, that live within them.