Butterfly watching by Paul Whalley

[LCPete]

Just found this book in a charity shop. It is out of date , printed in 1980 and two of the species are now gone. It still a really nice book with good advice and was nice to see an old book that is not about collecting butterflies the emphasis is on watching and photographing them
Pete

[Rogerdodge]

Pete
I bought this book as a paperback in the early eighties.
It is an excellent read, and the photography section which was aided by Heather Angel (one of my favourite photographers) is still pretty relevant today.
Incidentally many of the drawings are by Richard Lewington.
Sadly the ravages of time have made the glue used in the binding very brittle, and it is now at risk of losing pages if I am not very careful!
Another book I got around then was by Margaret Brook(e)s and had photographs of all the life stages of all the British Butterflies, all taken by the author - a real feat.
I have misplaced this book, but would love to get it again.
Roger

[Roger Gibbons]

I also had the excellent book by Margaret Brooks but can’t find it now. Maybe it’s in the loft or maybe I lent it to someone. I think she reared every British species herself.

I suspect the Paul Whalley book Pete is referring to is a UK butterfly book. Whalley also wrote the 1979 Hamlyn Guide to Butterflies, which is all the UK and many of the more common European species. A word of warning to anyone who is using this a field guide – it is full of errors.
Here are a few of the more obvious ones:
Southern comma underside – is a comma
Marbled fritillary – looks more like a Lesser marbled
Provencal and Meadow fritillaries look more like Heath
Arran brown is more likely a Large ringlet
Woodland ringlet is an Arran brown
Water ringlet is a Large ringlet
Woodland brown is a Lattice brown or similar
Sloe hairstreak is a False ilex hairstreak
Zephyr blue looks more like a Common blue
Alpine argus is a Silvery argus
Escher’s blue is a Common blue

Not surprisingly he avoids pyrgus species almost completely.

These aren’t even the tricky species to separate. This is a pretty appalling and inexcusable catalogue of errors. As the back cover says Whalley was an entomologist at the natural History Museum, it reflects badly on them. Other books published around that time (e.g. Paul Sterry) are equally as bad, with the obvious exceptions of Tolman & Lewington and Higgins & Riley. Maybe they just assumed that no-one else would know either.

[Mikhail]

If I remember correctly, the Woodland Brown was a North American butterfly from the genus Lethe!

Misha

[Roger Gibbons]

Here is the photo (middle). I've also attached the Heath, Provencal and Meadow Fritillary page. I guess as the "Meadow Fritillary" is a female, it could just be that, but misleading to include a photo of a female without saying so, especially as one sees about ten males to each female.

ImageWhalley1.JPG (161.62 KiB) Viewed 474 times

ImageWhalley2.JPG (151.47 KiB) Viewed 474 times