Customer Reviews:
 Comprehensive, beautifully illustrated and modestly priced August 10, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I can only agree with the previous reviewers. This modestly priced guide is also an outstanding work and a spin off from the excellent 'Field Guide to Moths...' by the same authors.
There are over 20,000 species of insect in the UK and over 2000 are moths. Not surprisingly, many books cover only selected species (and try to conceal this shortcoming) leaving one wondering if they are going to give a reliable identification. This book gets as close as one can to covering all the bases, as it has all the 'macro' moths (about 900 species, generally 1cm-2cm long and upwards).
The images are so much clearer in this book than those I remember from years ago (e.g. Richard South's two volume 'Moths of the British Isles'). These are hand drawn and coloured, which is superior to photography, where lighting can make species look different between the eye and the camera. Moreover, they mostly show the moths in their resting pose, as one would find them in the field, rather than in 'display case mode'; killed then spreadeagled with a pin stuck through them.
My only criticism is trivial. One assumes that most illustrations are meant to be life size , and the occasional image is marked as magnified, but this is not made awfully clear in the book. The necessarily terse text entries do give forewing length; well that's what I think it means because the abbreviation 'FW' is not explained either, as far as I can tell.
For good measure, the publishers have finished this book with a waterproof cover and wire ring binding. It is nice to see such care going into a useful book. There's absolutely nothing to match it for the price (or several times the price for that matter). Even if you don't want to go out moth spotting just leafing through the beautiful illustrations is joy enough.
The plates from the standard field guide to British moths September 26, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
For those who do not already own the superb field guide, here is a portable (and cheaper!) ring-bound version consisting of the original plates together with their brief facing text. In fact, this version includes one additional species. Covers almost all c900 species of "macro" moth of Britain and Ireland. The plates are quite simply stunning - not just for their wealth of observed detail, but also because of their intrinsic beauty.
I still prefer to have the original version, but I can imagine that this ring-bound edition will be very popular.
Chris Sharpe, 26 September 2007. ISBN: 0953139964
excellent August 9, 2007
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
This guide ddid save my lIfe.. Without being a moth madman, I do enjoy identify moths when i see some, and this guide is absolutely a life saver, for every beginners. It is very well done, just like the famous "field guide to the moths of Gb and northern Ireland" but in a very useable format.
it does make the identificatio n of similar species quite easy .. its weakest point are pugs.. these are still a nightmare to deal with anyway...
|
