Peterson First Guide To Insects Of North America

Peterson First Guides

by Roger Tory Peterson

A simplified version of the full-sized field guides makes it easy and fun to get started in the field.  Peterson First Guides are the first books the beginning naturalist needs. Condensed versions of the famous Peterson Field Guides , the First Guides focus on the animals, plants, and other natural things you are most likely to see. They make it fun to get into the field and easy to progress to the full-fledged Peterson Guides.

Genres: Reference, Field Guides, Nonfiction, Nature, Biology, Guides, Science

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 1998

About the author

Roger Tory Peterson was an American naturalist, ornithologist, artist, and educator, and held to be one of the founding inspirations for the 20th century environmental movement.

Reviews

[Trent Marv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alright so this is a very simplified beginner's guide to insects. And as that it's a great starter for insects of the region. It begins with a brief introduction and shows off some other arthropods mistaken for insects like Millipedes, centipedes, isopods, and arachnids. Then goes over the groups of arthropods. There are some notable exclusions of entire orders however that I do feel prevent this from being a perfect coverage; these are the Scorpion flies, webspinners, and mantisflies.
The art is well done and the information within is still solid up to this day. But so simple I'd recommend it only for beginners as insect enthusiasts will not get much mileage out of it

[Alex Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the Peterson first guides, especially this one because it introduces all of the insect orders and talks about North American species as examples. Is easy to read and although it looks like a field guide it is designed to be read cover to cover, just the way I like to read field guides. It is literally a book to read first before using an insect field guide. It will not only make using ID guides much easier but teaches how to look at insects in a way that will let you hold them in your mind. It teaches morphology and behaviour to look for, and recognize. It has definately turned a lot of the mysterious bugs I see into real creatures with names who are doing things I understand.

[jacky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of a few books I used when I had to do my bug collection as a freshmen. I've been seeing it at my parents' house for months but finally got around to writing down the ISBN number. When I picked it up, I distinctly remembered the pictures and layout of this book. It served its purpose for my bug collection.

[Laine Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a number of reference books when I'm writing certain novels. This is one that I looked at for info on butterflies. I was drawn into the info on dragonflies (a personal fav), mayflies, beetles and other insects like bees. A clear guide that helped me get a baseline on my research!

[Cws]

J595.7Lea

[Dad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I don't use this as much as my other identification books for insects, this seems to have a lot of the bugs that are hard to identify. This has excellent illustrations.

[Melanie]

great for J and H to identify bugs