A Swift Guide to Butterflies of Mexico and Central America: Second Edition

I wanted to give this field guide a 5 star rating, being familiar with Glassberg's excellent books such as Birding through Binoculars and knowing he is such an authority on butterflies, but ended up with a 4 star for reasons I will explain. First, the good stuff. The photos are all high quality, excellent representations of the species shown. Coverage seems to be quite comprehensive, including more than 2000 species. And, to my knowledge, there is no other field guide comparable to this one. My main issue has to do with the layout of the book. Vital information such as range and distribution, habitat and caterpillar plant food are reduced to tiny marginalia placed on the already small photographs. This has the effect of cluttering the photo as well as making it easy to miss important data on each species. The distribution maps are literally the size of my pinky fingernail (about .25" x .5"). It would have been a much better idea to have text with all the vital info on one page and photos on the facing page, as in many bird guides. Finally, I was primarily interested in butterflies in Panama, and since the title included Central America, I was disappointed that it was nearly impossible to discern, either from distribution maps or anything else, which species were to be found in Panama. Still, this is probably the best guide out there at the moment.

I am an amateur butterfly photographer having taken photographs in the Butterfly Garden at the Detroit Zoo over a period of 11 years. The butterflies in the Garden come from Costa Rica and El Salvador, and I have attempted to identify my images using photographs in butterfly books or with the help of experts at the Garden.However, I have found that It is very easy to misidentify butterflies because of similarities in appearance of closely related species. For example, after purchasing this book, I quickly discovered that I had incorrectly identified a butterfly as a Tiger-striped Longwing, whereas the correct identification was a Variable Tigerwing.Glassberg's book identifies each butterfly by graphically detailing specific unique field markings of the butterfly. I am not aware of any other book that enables one to make clear identifications in this matter. All other books that I have seen simply have photographs or illustrations of butterflies, sometimes with descriptive text. However, such text rarely compares with the precise graphical field markings approach of this book.For those interested in correctly identifying butterfly photographs and illustrations, Glassberg's book is unique and indispenable. This is an outstanding addition to butterfly books focusing on Mexico and Central America.

Jeffrey Glassberg is well-known to butterfly and dragonfly aficionados for his copiously-illustrated "Through Binoculars" guidebooks. Through the North American Butterfly Association and its magazine "American Butterflies," he is largely responsible for promoting "butterflying" (butterfly watching, as against collecting) as an outdoor recreational activity now enjoyed by millions. This is a very useful little book that has received remarkably little attention or publicity. It is basically a collection of 3250 color photos--a mixture of from-life candids and dead specimens on pins--of butterflies more or less likely to be encountered by butterfly-watching travelers in Mexico and Central America, including many skippers and gossamer-wings (mostly hairstreaks) never before illustrated in one easily-accessible place. Range maps and biological information are presented in very telegraphic form; there is almost no "text." I can testify from personal experience that the maps are not always accurate, but they are better than anything hitherto available--and that can be said of the book as a whole. The blurb on the back cover says "This is the first complete field guide to the butterflies of Mexico or any Central or South American country." That depends on one's definition of "complete," and in fact "Las Mariposas de Chile" by Luis E. Pena G. and Alfredo J. Ugarte P. beat it into print by ten years! Like all such books there will be taxonomic questions...but as of today (September 17, 2012) this is THE place to go to sight-ID Mesoamerican butterflies. I've been working in Latin America for 35 years--and I use it.

Great photos.I used this guide on my first real butterflying trip. I ended up identifying about 30 species and found several that will require additional research to nail down. As far as I could tell, ever species I encountered was covered in the book.I really liked the photographic summary of all of the butterfly groups at the end of the book. I found that almost every butterfly I saw was represented in this section, allowing me to quickly find the section I was looking for.There are no species accounts, just photos (typically 1-3 photos per species depending on how much geographic and sexual variation there is); range maps and a few bullet points on key ID features. I personally would have liked a bit more, but on the other hand I appreciated that the book was relatively small and light.I would recommend this book.

I go to the butterfly shows as often as I can and lots of butterflies there are from Mexico and Central America. This book is good at identifying them. It's very worth buying the US ID book from the same company by the same authors as well.

Very usefull for beginers and Lycaenidae and Hesperiidae lovers but some names are obsolete, like Papilio cresphontes (Heraclides cresphontes). Also the maps information is confusing, for some species it says "Costa Rica South" but actually you can find that species in the north of Costa Rica too.

Range maps show Mexico - really useful, then I used the book in Panama too. Indispensable.

I used this when traveling to Panama in May 2016. This was a helpful guide - especially when college students would simply try to match up images of the animals in their pictures and in the book. I really liked the multiple pictures (male, female, some morphological variants).

This is a useful guide for South American butterflies as well. In an area that is not well covered with affordable photo guides this is a very helpful addition. I found that it covered many of the butterflies found in Trinidad and the phots are well chosen to represent the distinguishing features. Particularly well covered are the Skippers, which often get neglected. With such a dense array of photos the layout can be a bit confusing but once you get used to the sections it is quite quick to find the match you are looking for. The taxonomy seems up to date in this second edition too. If you are going anywhere near the region then get it.

The images are very good and clear to see all the relevant markings on the wings . I managed to ID all but one of the species , that I photgraphed in Costa Rica .

it is a good guide however photographs are small and I found that I could barely follow the editors intentions within this book

Very good!

This is a very concise guide to Butterflies of Central America