The new Peterson moth guide

The first Peterson Field Guide to Moths was written by Dr. Charles V. Covell, Jr., and published in 1984 by Houghton Mifflin. The guide was discontinued from the Peterson line in 1996, and for many years was very difficult to find a copy of; some used book stores were selling it for as much as $100. In 2005 the book was republished by the Virginia Museum of Natural History, independent of the Peterson series, and will be returning for another reprint this year. It is now possible to purchase a copy of the guide through the VMNH’s website.

Despite that mothing has been a popular pasttime in the United Kingdom for many years now, and several field guides exist to their lepidoptera, it is only just beginning to catch on in North America. For many years Dr. Covell’s guide was the only one easily available that was aimed at the general public. In the last decade a few additional guides, such as Louis Handfield’s Les Papillions du Quebec, or Jerry Powell & Paul Opler’s Moths of Western North America, have been written. However, these guides, including Dr. Covell’s, all present the moths as spread, pinned specimens rather than as photographs of live individuals at rest, as one would encounter them. It can often be difficult to interpret the images on the plates to fit the moth you are trying to identify.

I took up mothing in 2007. Very quickly I became frustrated with the resources available to people wanting to learn to identify moths. I relied heavily on the Moth Photographer’s Group website, which presented photos of live individuals in resting postures. I had the good fortune to be friends with David Beadle, a bird illustrator by profession but a moth enthusiast by night, who would also help me with my identifications. Quite often he would send me one of his own photos to help me figure out an ID. It didn’t take me long to suggest to him that he should compile his photo library into a printed guide.

Well, one thing lead to another, as things often do, and in 2008, with much help and support from our agent along the way, we signed a contract with Houghton Mifflin to produce a new Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America. Why just for the northeast? Two reasons: we didn’t feel we had the necessary expertise to expand outside of this range, and we felt that trying to include species from a wider geographic area would compromise the usefulness of the book. That said, many of the species that will be treated in this guide occur throughout much of eastern North America, or even across the continent, and the guide should be useful even to people who do not live within the boundaries defined by our range maps – from New Brunswick south to Virginia and west to Minnesota and Missouri.

The guide will present photographic images of moths as they are normally found in their resting postures. We hope to include about 1300 species, illustrated by about 1500 photographs. Both macromoths and many of the smaller micromoths will be treated in the guide; the latter group are only skimmed over in Dr. Covell’s book. We plan to include range maps rather than range descriptions, to the best of our ability – there is limited data available for moths compared to other organisms such as birds. And of course, the plates will utilize the Peterson identification system of arrows to highlight key features for confirming the ID of a species.

The book is currently slated to be published in spring 2012, and should retail for about US$25. It should be available for preorder in early 2012. In the meantime, you can purchase a copy of Dr. Covell’s guide from the VMNH.

The images on this page represent sample draft designs, and were prepared by myself based on existing Peterson series designs for the purposes of visualizing the layout to ensure that all pieces have been accounted for, as well as for early promotional purposes. The final layout and design will be completed by Houghton Mifflin, and will likely differ from those presented here. Still, these images may give you an idea of what to expect from our guide.