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Butterflies of India: BNHS Field Guide

by Kehimkar, I.; Gayatri, V.D.

Series : BNHS Field Guides
Publisher : Bombay Natural History Society
Illustrations : col plates

Our customers have given this title an average rating of 4 out of 5 from 1 review(s)

Customer Rating: AvgRating5

Description:

A fully illustrated colour guide to butterflies of the Indian subcontinent, with photographs of more than 1000 species and subspecies. The book deals not only with the biology and identification of butterflies, but also has a sections on butterfly watching and photography. Descriptions of the butterflies are illustrated with colour images of specimens by Isaac Kehimkar and over 50 contributors from Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Also includes life histories of different butterfly families and their adaptation techniques.

Customer Reviews

Our customers have given this title an average rating of 4 out of 5 from 1 review(s), Click here to add your own review for this title.

Robert Brock on 1/13/2020 11:35:38 AM

Rating5 (4 out of 5)

This is a nature guide sponsored by Tata and published by the Bombay Natural History Society. The result is a masterpiece of compactness: photographs of 1025 Indian species are presented in just over 500 pages. The author, Isaac Kehimkar, generously acknowledges the assistance of his expert design team and 50 butterfly specialists. The book is a sturdy hardback, weighing about 960g and measuring 22X15X3cm so you would need a bag to carry it in the field. The introduction provides an overview of butterfly biology and India’s vegetation types, so the targeted readers seem to be nature photographers and other naturalists, rather than lepidopterists.

Species are usually restricted to one photograph with a brief description. I think non-specialists will have a hard time distinguishing lookalike species in groups such as the skippers. Only a few subspecies are described, which was a disappointment for me as I was hoping to identify subspecies in a small collection from northern India. However, the book provides an overview of which species occur in India and will be a very useful addition to naturalists, both native and visitors.