Britain's Insects (WILDGuides): A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland (WILDGuides, 23)

Everything anyone might need to know in one well presented bookIf I had an excuse to buy two I'd buy two (but I don't).The book has a great style to it with clear photographs of increasingly disgusting yet fascinating creatures all coded to correspond to the text in a way you will have to see to appreciate for yourself-I'm confident almost anyone interested in insects would love this particular book as a gift or self buy.

Superb photographs of all the insects moths and butterflies you need. The location maps are very useful and the graphs give you the time of year you would see them, overall a very good quality guide, but it is certainly not a field guide, it's a heavy book to be carried around.

I received this book for my recent birthday. What a monumental work! Covers so many different classes of insects, many of which have no separate guides, in one volume Too big to be used as a field guide, but ideal to keep at home as a reference book for identifying photos taken in the field.

I have several of this series of books now and they are all excellent. They are available for a range of wildlife including amphibians, butterflies, mammals, spiders etc. Each is written by an expert in the subject but to the same format so that you can quickly see images of the insect/animal alongside other vital identification information including where you will find them and when. There is also a wealth of in-depth information separated into the front of the books.

I was really excited to get this field guide, and especially like the fact that it is not just an ID guide: it also goes into the anatomy of each family, insect behaviour, what makes insects different from other animals, and so on. It's a lovely book to hold and use: I especially like its chunky feel, hard wearing wipeable jacket, and a binding that allows you to open it flat at any page without it cracking.In practice I've been a little bit disappointed with the coverage; in fact I've not been able to ID many of the species I come across in my daily walks and in my garden. The use of colour coding, which initially seemed quite attractive, isn't all that clear (do the colours represent specific levels in the classification of orders, suborders, families, etc?) And while the layout of the species accounts is clearly explained, some of the abbreviations are not spelled out - for example BI is used in the Order level headings but it took me ages to figure out it meant Britain & Ireland (W means worldwide). At times it feels a bit over-complicated, but perhaps I will grow to understand it more with use.

This is a fantastic book, very clear and well laid out. Tons of information and the diagrams and pictures finish it off brilliantly !

The title says all you need to know, get one and read it if you are interested in insects.

What I really learned from trying to use this book to identify insects is that there really are an awful lot of them, far more than will fit in any one book. This book will help you to identify the most common ones, but beyond that you need a shelf-full of books and a magnifying glass - and you need the damn thing to stay still for a moment.It does what it does really well though with nice clear pictures and identification guides. Even when you can't fully identify something this book will at least get you into the general area - "ok so that's some type of saw fly" (or whatever). Then if you need more than that you can go out and start buying books on bugs, moths and so on and this book points you in the right direction for that too.One thing that would improve it is a bit more on the lives of the insects, this really provides very little beyond basic identification.