Dispar
The Online Journal of Lepidoptera
ISSN 2056-9246
The Online Journal of Lepidoptera
ISSN 2056-9246
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by Dominic Couzens and Gail Ashton.
A photographic identification guide to 150 species of garden insect most commonly found in Britain and North-West Europe. Packed with information, written with huge enthusiasm and illustrated with incredible close-up photos, this guide shines a spotlight on the insects in your garden.
The introduction covers how to attract insects to your garden, the insect lover's year, a description of the different parts of an insect and details of the insect orders described. For each species there is a keenly observed description providing a wealth of detail to help you identify even the smallest creature, as well as one or two photographs labelled with distinguishing features. There are details of its life cycle from egg to adult, a calendar showing the time of year when the adult can be seen and star facts that give further proof of their fascinating lives.
This is a visually appealing book that is full of interesting snippets regarding the selected species, with a nice balance of supporting images to illustrate both appearance as well as highlight specific features that the authors have mentioned.
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Either a page or half page is dedicated to each species and, given the limited space available, the coverage is somewhat constrained, and readers interested in specific groups would no doubt benefit from other resources that can provide the additional detail. That being said, I found that this book was quite readable and insightful when I moved out of my comfort zone (Lepidoptera) and into other orders.
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On that topic, following a discussion of a number of general introductory topics such as photography and how to attract insects to your garden, the species are organised as follows:
In summary, this is very much an introductory book that will be appreciated by those just starting to take an interest in the insects they are likely to find in their garden, and who are looking for a few pertinent details of the species they find. Children are an obvious target audience. Those with a deeper interest in insects would be better served by the works of Paul Brock such as Britain's Insects and A Comprehensive Guide to Insects of Britain and Ireland.
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