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An illustrated obsession, a guidebook, a kaleidoscope of life on the wing.
"If you live in the Bay Area and wish to know the butterflies, this is the only field guide you'll ever need." —Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift
Liam O'Brien has spent three decades chasing, learning about, protecting, occasionally catching, and always loving butterflies. Here, he shares his capacious knowledge of California butterflies through a treasure trove of stories and 700 gorgeous, hand-drawn illustrations—featuring both adult forms and caterpillars—of the 135 species that live in the greater Bay Area. This sumptuous book also shares practical tips for finding and identifying all the butterflies who call the Bay Area home. Learn which plants nurture Silver-spotted Skippers, which trail to hike to see Swallowtails flitting creek-side, and why so many butterflies cluster on hilltops. Share in the joy that O'Brien brings to the study of butterflies, and join the community scientists contributing to our understanding of Monarchs, Metalmarks, and Marbles—and what they need to survive and thrive in our busy Bay Area.
"This comprehensive and gorgeous book is so full of reverence for the prettier flying insects in our midst, so lacking in pretension, and so easy to understand, it’'l inspire even the most fervent city-dwellers to get outside and find the little buggers." —KQED
"O’Brien has produced a comprehensive but nontraditional guide to local butterflies, one that combines accurate and detailed scientific information with anecdotes, many funny, and gorgeous paintings that took three years to complete." —East Bay Express
"In his book, O'Brien works to set the record straight on a few misconceptions about butterflies in general. In an intentional subversion of the field guide status quo, his drawings put the female morphology front and center." —Mission Local
"If you live in the Bay Area and wish to know the butterflies, this is the only field guide you'll ever need. Liam O’Brien is a passionate observer, a talented artist and a dedicated ecologist who, among other things, helped reintroduce the Variable Checkerspot to the Presidio. If they gave this book to every high school graduate in the state, it would be a classic within a generation." —Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift
"I can think of no other butterfly book that matches this one in sheer beauty, passion, and depth of local knowledge. Confiding, charming, and witty, Liam's reliable text is a grand gift to butterfly lovers, and his art is original among butterfly painters. A thing of wonder and joy." —Robert Michael Pyle, author of The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies and Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest
Liam O'Brien is a self-taught lepidopterist and illustrator. He used to be a professional actor, having appeared in Les Misérables on Broadway, but shifted his powers of observation towards nature several decades back. He's fascinated not only by butterflies but also by our relationships to them. He surveyed the county of San Francisco, where he lives, for which butterfly species remained in 2007 and 2009. He is the creator of the Green Hairstreak Project for the organization Nature in the City, and he led efforts to restore Variable Checkerspots to the Presidio. Since 2015 he has helped monitor the endangered Mission Blue butterfly in the Marin Headlands. O'Brien was the recipient of Bay Nature magazine's Local Hero Award for Environmental Education in 2014. He lives in San Francisco.
Introduction
What is a Butterfly?
The Parts of a Butterfly
The Scales Have It
On Metamorphosis
On Migration
A Shout-out for the Moths
On Nets and Collecting
On Common Names and Latin Names and the Big Bag of Crazy Those Are
On Butterfly Counts
On Butterfly Watching
The Best Butterfly Walks in the Greater Bay Area
- Alum Rock Park
- Kent Pump Road
- Garrapata State Park
- Mitchell Canyon Trail to Eagle Rock
- Chews Ridge
- Pinnacles National Park
The Structure of These Entries
The Skippers (Hesperiidae)
The Swallowtails (Papilionidae)
- Tigers on Market Street
The Whites, Sulphurs, Marbles and Orangetips: (Pieridae)
- Bilateral Gynandromorphism
The Brush-foots (Nymphalidae)
- On Silverspots, Lumpers and Splitters
- Interview with Mia Monroe
The Gossamer-Winged: Blues, Coppers, Hairstreaks and Metalmarks (Lycaenidae)
- The Green Hairstreak Project
- In the Shadow of Xerces
- On a Mission
The Metalmarks (Riodinidae)
- The Hope Butterfly
- Xerces Rising (Sort Of ...)
Acknowledgements
Appendix A: Strays
Appendix B: Tableaux Keys
Organizations
Glossary
Bibliography
Index of Butterflies
Index of Host Plants
About the Author
A Note on Type