Butterfly Identification

Butterflies are one of the most conspicuous insect groups, with wonderful colour and shapes. However, sometimes their identification is not easy and we need precise keys to identify butterflies. On this page, you can find information, free resources like books and field guides, and several options for searching online.

First, it is important to differentiate butterflies (Rhopalocera) from moths (Heterocera) and then determine the proper family and individual belongs.

In Europe, we have 6 different families:

1. Hesperiidae - Skippers
2. Papilionidae - Apollos, Festoons and Swallowtails
3. Pieridae - Whites and Yellows
4. Riodinidae - Metalmarks
5. Lycaenidae - Blues, Copper and Hairstreaks
6. Nymphalidae - Fritillaries, Admirals, Emperors, Gliders, Browns and Heaths

eBMS Field Guides

There are many materials and resources to help in butterfly identification like websites, books and field guides. This last one can be a good support in the field providing the essential characteristics to find the correct butterfly species.

In the ABLE project, we produced several Field Guides per region reducing the number of species and doing easily the identification of butterflies in a concrete area. You can download the pdf and print directly the Field Guide. 

• Field Guides of Italy: Padana Plain region, Mediterranean, Apennines, Mediterranean Islands (in Italian)
• Field Guides of Spanish regions: Andalucia (Spanish) & Andalusia (English), and Castilla-La Mancha (English) & Castilla-La Mancha (Spanish)
• Field Guide of Slovenia: English and Slovenian version
• Field Guide of Cyprus (English)
• Field Guide of Austria: Vienna (German)
• Field Guide of Poland: Polish version 
• Field Guide of Lithuania: English and Lithuanian version
• Booklet Common species Portugal Continental (Portuguese)

You can find all these Field Guides, species list per country and region and more information on the eBMS website

EBG Field Guides: species groups

The European Butteflies Group created a series of field guides for helping in butterfly identification, in this case, focusing on difficult groups and showing useful pictures to recognise identification characteristics that distinguish species. You can download all these guides for free: 

• Pyrgus Group of Grizzled Skippers: sixteen species, a bit problematic on the identification due to their similarity and tricky identification characteristics, where you need to check several marks for proper identification. You have two versions to download the high resolution (45mb) or medium resolution (12mb)
• European Fritillaries: complete key identification guide with all the European Fritillaries, from deciding which genus and then using a process of comparison and elimination. Download this guide (large file -66mb)
• Large and Medium Fritillaries: including the species of Argynnis, Brenthis, Fabriciana, Issoria, and Speyeria. Download the high resolution (16mb) or low resolution (4mb)
• Small Fritillaries: 1. Boloria - all 15 Boloria species are covered including difficult ones. Download the high resolution (22mb) or low resolution (6mb)

• Small Fritillaries: 2. Euphydryas - The six species of Euphydryas are illustrated in this guide, including difficult forms and subspecies. Download (11mb) 
• Small Fritillaries: 3. Melitaea - This group now includes the old sub-group of Mellicta which traditionally posed the greatest identification problems for European butterfly recorders. Download the high resolution (18mb) or low resolution (5mb)
• Whites: Pieris - a complete guide to identify all the European Pieris with notes to distinguish them from other similar genera. Download (9mb) 
• Brimstones: Gonepteryx. Guide for clarifying the confusion of the three Gonepteryx species with their map distribution: Brimstone [Gonepteryx rhamni], Powdered Brimstone [Gonepteryx farinosa] and Cleopatra [Gonepteryx cleopatra]. Download (3mb)

^{© Copyright Butterfly Conservation: These guides are made available for private use only. Any form of commercial usage is forbidden.}

^{Many thanks to Bill Raymond for designing the ID guides above. Thanks to Bernard Watts for information and photographs, to Matt Rowlings, Roger Gibbons, Nick Greatorex-Davies, David Moore and Vincent Baudraz for photographs and to Richard Lewington for the use of his illustrations. Thanks also to LepiDiv for permitting the use of their distribution maps.}

 A Photographic Guide - Butterflies of Central Europe & Britain

 This Field Guide contains information to identify 269 butterfly species occurring in Britain, Western and Central Europe. With detailed pictures of identification characteristics and precise pointing marks, this Guide will help you to identify difficult and similar species.

Author Peter Gergely. A hardcopy can be bought at the Dutch Butterfly Conservation.

 Butterflies of the Iberian Peninsula

This interesting resource Butterflies of the Iberian Peninsula by Paul R. G. Browning (pdf English) is a revised version that contains a lot of information covering Portugal and Spain's butterflies. This photographic record and field Guide can be found on the European Butterfly Group (EBG) website together with more information to help in butterfly identification:  different butterfly identification guides per group of species:

• Pieris (Whites)
• Small Fritillaries (Euphydryas)
• Brimstones (Gonepteryx)

There are many websites on the internet that could help a lot in butterfly identification in different languages. Here we give a list of the best website to help you identifying butterflies and moths: 

• www.leps.it   Moths and Butterflies of Europe and North Africa
• Lepiforum   Bestimmungshilfe für die in Europa nachgewiesenen Schmetterlingsarten
• www.learnaboutbutterflies.com Butterflies of the world
• www.eurobutterflies.com by Matt Rowlings
• UFZ Distribution maps of European butterfly species
• Butterflies of Bulgaria