Whenever anyone enquires of me as to field guide recommendations – particularly for use in large countries such as the United States – I always make it a point of recommending that they try to secure one with as tightly defined a geographic area as is sufficient to their intended use in order to keep the options presented both relevant and manageable. Needless to say, such local guidebooks are most easily found for popular subjects; birds toping the list, with less popular subjects, or subjects generally left to experts for identification to the species level, more challenging (and often very expensive) to obtain. Thus when I discovered Dana Wilde’s recently published A Backyard Book of Spiders in Maine from North Country Press, “a general interest book by a general interest backyard naturalist for general interest readers and naturalists,” and priced accordinly, I knew I had to give it the attention it deserves.
Being a work focusing “on spiders likely to be spotted in Maine [but] by no means comprehensive,” Wilde presents clearly written and informative profiles – accompanied by very useful images, primarily from his own camera – of forty-two species, as well as a number of additional genera, of spider that anyone may reasonably expect to find in the course of exploring the natural world throughout the Pine Tree State.
And lest it be thought that this is only a book that should be of interest to Mainers and those visiting the area, Wilde has included a remarkable number of well-written and very informative short essays and sidebars addressing a wide range of spider natural history. Truly, this is a field guide with a clearly defined close geographic range that is worth the attention of a wide range of readers.
