Butterfly guides

I know there is a large amount of information on identifying butterflies available on the internet. But I'm old enough to want a proper book in my hand ...

When I lived in the Netherlands in my teens and twenties, I had a butterfly field guide covering the whole of Europe, 'Elseviers Vlindergids'. Even though, for obvious reasons, our focus will be on butterflies in Britain, I do like to see a somewhat larger picture, so I ordered myself a recent replacement of my old Europe-wide Elsevier's guide: Collins Butterfly Guide, Illustrations are by Richard Lewington, who, in my view, is unsurpassed as an illustrator of insects.

I also wanted something Britain-focused, and decided on The Butterflies of Britain and Ireland. This is not your typical field guide; each species gets at least two full pages, and some up to five. These pages provide information on their ecology, their conservation status, as well as historical anecdotes. Again, illustrations are by Richard Lewington.

As I was looking for British field guides, I stumbled across a laminated card, published by the Field Studies Council: This Guide to the Butterflies of Britain and Ireland will be very useful to take along if, for whatever reasons, taking field guides is inconvenient or just no doable. Yet again, illustrations are by Richard Lewington.

Although I said I much prefer a real book in my hands. of course it would be silly to ignore web-based resources. The web-sites I found most useful in helping identification of butterflies are those from the Butterfly Conservation and by UK Butterflies. The latter web-site also has an affiliated Facebook group, which I joined.

Combining all resources made clear that there are a little over 60 butterfly species resident in Britain or regularly migrant to these shores (so not counting vagrants and species which have gone extinct). I feel that's a nice number to get our teeth in: not so few that you quickly have seen all you can see, and not so many that identification in the field becomes almost impossible. I'm aware that we're coming 'into butterflies' when a good part of the season is already behind us, but hopefully, we'll still be able to see a range of species!