Caterpillars of Eastern North America: A Guide to Identification and Natural History (Princeton Field Guides)

First, let me say that I've had this for two years, and it has held up very well, so I can speak highly of its durability. The binding is not coming loose at all, and I have flipped through it countless times. It is one of those books that is always laying out and ready in my apartment. I haven't taken it to the field much, it's pretty heavy, and it really isn't that kind of guide, in my opinion. This is something that should be pored over indoors and learned from. There is so much knowledge here. It is true that this book is not easy to use if you have no knowledge of lepidopteran families. But I think anyone who has enough interest to consider buying a book like this should do it without hesitation. As I said before, this is a book that can teach you an incredible amount. The language straddles the line between scientific detachment and human fascination. It is very, very easy to read. There are many references to classic scientific papers on certain lepidopteran families, so your self-education can really spring off from this one book, and it sets a good example to any budding biologists who may someday be writing about biology, a subject that needs all the talented writers it can get. This is also an entertaining book. I can easily imagine someone buying this just to look at the pictures, and never even looking at the text at all, and still being endlessly amazed. Highly recommend this book. Add it to your shelf of insect books, keep it in your backpack, leave it on your coffee table, leave it on your toilet, just buy it. You can't go wrong here.

I looked for a long time for a moth and caterpillar book that would most apply to me in northeast Texas. I needed enough details and species to make a purchase worthwhile. Each example has a clear color picture of the adult larvae and adult moth/butterfly, and typical area/habitat/diet. It is a little cumbersome for traveling, but a more compact guide lacking too much information would be a waste of money for me. For ease of use and for the pages to lie flat, I spent five dollars and had Kinko's shave the bound edge of the book, punch holes in the pages for a plastic coil binder, and add a protective plastic front and back sheet. The book has an extensive back index, bibliography, and glossary. The book has convenient, colored page corners per family/species. Twenty-eight pages cover anatomy, growth stages, and methods for locating/identifying/raising moths and butterflies. Those sections are only a very small percentage of the identification guide. For where I live, this book has helped me identify every specimen I have seen. Sometimes, individual specimens vary somewhat in color, and have altered appearances during larvae development. When this happens, I go online for further confirmation. I highly recommend this guide for serious moth and butterfly watchers in Eastern North America.

I didn't find anything to dislike about this book but lots to like. Since my other book about caterpillars only has black and white drawings instead of color photographs, I have to say the great color phots of both the caterpillar and the adult insect has to be what I like most about the book. I also like the way it is organized with each family color tabs in the corner of the pages. It has a glossary for armatures (like me) and two indexes.(one for food plants and the other a subject index), I learned a lot by reading the Introduction. Ideas about conservation, further study, preservation and how to attract butterflies and moths. I also liked that the book lists web sites for further study. The bibliography is also good, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in finding out what that worm is on their plants, what that worm turns into and what you can do to help conserve this very important part of our environment.

I'm just a beginner diving into the world of Lepidoptera and find this book easy enough to use. Great photos and descriptions, also love that it lists the hostplant(s) of each species.

We bought a butterfly kit from Toys R Us, and hatched out some Painted Lady butterflies from mail order caterpillars. We decided to take it a step further, and hatch out some that we found. The biggest challenge was finding out what they ate. So we bought this book. It has been perfect for our purposes. We have hatched out a cabbage worm, which is a pest, but is also an abundant specimen for a first try. This past week, we hatched out our first Monarch Butterfly. We have supplemented by Googling for information online, and another butterfly identification book that is very specific to butterflies. I would suggest adding an easier butterfly component to this book, but it is already pretty thick and comprehensive for caterpillars. It would be too big, and cease to be a field guide. We used a butterfly book to figure out that many of the swallowtails around us are Spice Wood Swallowtails. This book told us that the caterpillars look like bird poop for the first three molts. I probably would have continued to pass up what I thought was bird poop on leaves. Now we can hatch some swallowtails!

Not too long ago in human history, people thought that caterpillars and butterflies were two entirely different critters. This book illustrates beautifully how different the pupual stage of the butterfly is from the adult! So many of us can identify a Monarch caterpillar, but how about a swallowtail or a sulphur? And, yeah, you know what a Gypsy Moth caterpillar looks like, and maybe even a Wooly Bear, but what do they TURN INTO? The pictures in this book will tell you! I'll say that this book isn't for the rank beginner, they'd probably do better with "Caterpillars in the Field and Garden : A Field Guide to the Butterfly Caterpillars of North America". And neither is it a definitive guide to all the caterpillars (that book has yet to be written). But it fits the niche right in-between. The pictures of the caterpillars are great; true to life and color, although the adult pictures are small, taken from pinned, collected adults, which makes for sometimes faded specimens and could never be used as a field guide as most of the moths never fan their wings. Moths are the primary reason to buy this book. If you've ever found a caterpillar in your garden and just don't know what it is, it's just as likely (if not sometimes more so) to be a moth as a butterfly. The beginner books don't include many moths, despite the fact that moth caterpillars can be just as colorful, and large! The author gives a summary on each page of the more common species, what they look like, whether instars are different from stage to stage, range maps, and most importantly: WHAT THEY EAT. I'm not talking about whether you have to worry about finding these guys on your tomatoes, or in your cereal cabinet. Caterpillar species specialize on a certain type of food plant or plants. Sometimes the ONLY way to tell two species apart is to see what the caterpillar eats. The tips in this book will help you on your way to raise caterpillars at home, find eggs on plants, even identify some common diseases and parasites. Aspiring lepidopterists will find this book useful to move from novices to informed backyard naturalists.

The greatest field guide for caterpillars

This book is perfect for identifying caterpillars. It even includes information about what they eat and their behaviors.

A great guide to butterfly and moth larvae. Great photographs and easy to navigate. A great addition to my guide collection.

This fine volume by David L.Wagner more than satisfies my needs as an insect hobbyist/photographer. I happen to live in Canada and will probably never see half of the species profiled within the 700 plus pages of the book.

Really great guide! If you're interested in caterpillars (or the moths/butterfly's they turn into) then grab this book. Beautiful photos and excellent descriptions!

This doesn't cover ALL of the thousands of caterpillar species (that would be just about impossible), but it covers a good chunk of the commonly encountered ones. This book works reasonably well for western North America too.

The book is great to narrow down similar/same genus caterpillar species, even ones that aren't shown in the book (make use of google). However, the cover is slightly bent and the white paper/cardboard support of the cover is visible. Overall, would buy again but make sure to read the product description to check for the quality (used or new).