African Wildlife & Environment Issue 76 FINAL

GOOD READS

GOOD READS Book reviews by Dr John Ledger

Butterflies Woodall, Steve (2020) . Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa . Struik Nature, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Cape Town. Soft cover, 15x21 cm, 464 pp, illustrated in colour throughout with photographs and distribution maps. ISBN 978-1-77584 -587-4. R390 The first edition of this field guide

to our butterflies was published 15 years ago, and Steve Woodall has arguably done more than anyone else to expose the diversity and beauty of these insects to the lay public. Today we have a veritable army of citizen scientists armed with digital cameras, binoculars and sharp eyes, who send in records of butterflies to SABCA (South African Butterfly Conservation Assessment), a collaboration between the Lepidopterists' Society of Africa (LepSoc), the SANational Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and the Animal Demography Unit (ADU) at the University of Cape Town. SABCAhas now evolved into SALCA to include all Lepidoptera, and not only butterflies. Steve's revised Field Guide is the 'Butterfly Bible' that all nature enthusiasts will want to own. The text has been fully revised to reflect recent taxonomic changes, while species entries have been updated and expanded. Remarkably, the book features all of the 671 species known from the region. The photographs are superb, two-thirds of them are new to the revised edition, and a large number of them are by Steve himself. I was a little surprised that there is not a section on photographing butterflies, yet there is a full-pagenarrativeoncollecting butterflies (which is not damaging to populations, a popular misconception). There are a number of very useful introductory chapters which take up the first 40 pages of the book, followed by the species accounts (with photographs and distribution maps) and ending with indices, a glossary and a list of food plants. This is an outstanding, professional,masterpiece of a field guide, a tribute to the author, his collaborators and the publishers – a winner in every respect, a landmark in the documentation of the biodiversity of this country.

African Birds Watson, Rupert (2020) . Peacocks & Picathartes. Reflections on Africa's birdlife. Struik Nature, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Cape Town. Soft cover, 15x24 cm, 216 pp, illustrated with greyscale sketches and two maps. ISBN 978-1-77584 -560-7. R220 The author has lived in Kenya for 40 years and is an enthusiastic birder, as well as a lawyer, mediator, naturalist andwriter, having authored several books and published many articles. This latest offering is a very readable and eclectic account based on RupertWatson's own observations, and some very extensive reading and research he has conducted in the compilation of this book. The main chapters are Only in Africa, Mainly in Africa, and Six Special Species. I was intrigued to find Egyptian Goose and Hadeda in the latter chapter. At the end of the book there are short chapters on Conservation & Celebration, Inspiration & Information, and Bibliography & Further Reading. There is no index. The book is illustrated with rather charming pencil sketches by Peter Blackwell. Peacocks & Picathartes is a celebration of the diversity of Africa's birds, focussing on families that occur only in Africa, as well as iconic families and species that, although having close relatives in other parts of theworld, seem to embody something ofAfrica. This is a wonderful collection of stories that most birders will thoroughly enjoy, written in vibrant prose and filled with interesting information and anecdotes. It is a wonderful bedside book to dip into for unusual insights into the world of birds.

6 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 76 (2020)