Autumn 2010 he might have imagined. The first edition sold out earlier this year, nine years since its publication. WILDGuides sensibly recruited a real butterfly pundit to revise it, which is why the name of David Newland appears on the cover in rather bigger type than my name on the second edition, which has been fully revised and updated. If you read through it carefully, you will discover a sentence at the back that reads, “we had the tremendous advantage of being able to build on David Tomlinson’s excellent text from the original book”. Thanks, chaps. The new edition is a terrific improvement over the old, with more pages, more pictures
and more general information. I can honestly say that I think it’s the best photographic guide there is, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I? I’m really quite flattered that my name still appears on the cover. As for the Black Hairstreak – I went this year to Glapthorn Cow Pastures near Oundle to see it. If I were reviving the text, I would add that it is possibly Britain’s most boring butterfly, as well as one of its rarest. The two individuals I saw never moved in over an hour. The text of the second edition still uses the words I used in the first: highly elusive and secretive. Boring isn’t a word you can use in a butterfly book, however much you want to.
Britain’s Butterflies 2nd Edition
David Newland, Robert Still, David Tomlinson & Andy Swash WILDGuides 2010 A review by Rob Parker Many Suffolk Argus readers already own a copy of the original 2002 WILDGuides by David Tomlinson, himself a member of our Branch of Butterfly Conservation. I cherish mine because its pictorial presentation is different to any other butterfly book, each species being illustrated on one page of photographs blended with Rob Still’s artful backgrounds. This allows images of male & female, upperside and underside, egg, caterpillar and chrysalis to be shown together. Some people love it, others hate the artificial nature of the creation.
The 2002 edition sold out, with a donation to Butterfly Conservation made on every sale, and now WildGuides have created a Second Edition. I was surprised at the number of changes incorporated into the volume, making it very nearly a different book. The page count jumps from 192 to 224 pages, and a good deal of fresh material has been incorporated – even more than you would expect, as the size of the typeface has been reduced to squeeze in extra text and images. Most of the photographs are new, and the new author, David Newland
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