Collins Butterfly Guide.

[roundwood123]

My copy finally arrived today, after a quick flick through it looks brilliant. Steve

[Padfield]

It is the best guide - I would say essential - to the butterflies of Europe. Lafranchis is excellent, but Tolman and Lewington is the Bible. One caveat - I don't think it has ever been updated since the first edition in 1997 (correct me if I'm wrong, because I'll buy a new copy) and remains technically out of date in certain respects. The flight times are also frequently wrong and should be taken with a pinch of salt. In the last couple of years particularly I have seen things well before it says - most notably the Pyrgus skippers but other things too. It may be just that things have been emerging earlier recently.

NEVERTHELESS this is a guide you won't regret buying and you will very soon wonder how how you ever managed without it!

If you get a chance, pass by a second hand bookshop and get the original Higgins and Riley which Tolman replaced. This is very useful for species descriptions, though it contains some wild errors (like the mad confusion over ausonia/simplonia, which Tolman corrects - how could simplonia be other than the mountain species, named as it is after the Simplon Pass?!).

Guy

[roundwood123]

Hello Guy, thanks for the reply, this book has indeed been updated, i dont know what has changed as i dont have a 1997 copy but this is a 2008 edition.
The book has been on order from Amazon since Christmas.

[Padfield]

I shall check it out, then - how exciting! My old edition is falling apart at the seams - it has got around a bit!

Just so as not to put old H & R down, I looked at my 1st edition of that and the classification of simplonia/ausonia/crameri makes sense there - it was later editions, and other authors who copied, that made the mistake, as the various subspecies were reclassified as species and ausonia attached itself to the mountain butterfly. Not important - I'm just a pedant!

Guy

[Piers]

I too am looking forward to my copy flopping onto the door mat!

I shall be interested in how far these revisions go; for example Lysandra Slovakus: in Tolman 1997 this is simply listed under L. coridon coridon "Consistently bivoltine in one small area - details lacking".

Now slovakus is recognised as a distinct species can we hope for a little more coverage...?

Felix.

[Martin]

NEVERTHELESS this is a guide you won't regret buying and you will very soon wonder how how you ever managed without it!

Ordered

[Pete Eeles]

Now slovakus is recognised as a distinct species can we hope for a little more coverage...?

Apparently not

Out of interest, which "authority" are you referring to Felix? This has always intrigued me, since there are so many different "sources" out there

Cheers,

- Pete

[Padfield]

I see that a pair of set slovakus went on e-bay for £16, billed as a 'rare' butterfly... Some people clearly have a vested interest in splitting. But Fauna Europaeae doesn't recognise the taxon at all, so far as I can see - presumably it regards it simply as a bivoltine metapopulation of coridon.

G

[Piers]

Hmmm.

Fauna Europaeae is so infrequently updated that it is often woefully out of date.

Having said that, my source, my "authority", was one of my friends at a recent Entomological 'do' in London. I can not vouch for his accuracy...

Regarding Guy's comment referring to Ebay, I have been irregularly observing the British and European specimens that are offered for sale. "English" Large Blue are regularly selling for sums in excess of £300 per pair! This would provide a worrying incentive for an individual devoid of moral fibre....

The saddest aspect of the whole distasteful affair is that a good number of these "English" LB's that allegedly date from the '40's and earlier are clearly neither English nor of any particular age!

Felix.