On this page you can find:
- Butterfly Transect Manual
- Butterfly Identification Materials
- eBMS Material
Butterfly monitoring is vital for assessing butterfly population trends and understanding the causes of change. Over several decades and in many countries, butterflies have been monitored regularly and have produced many insights to support their conservation.
To support the further development of butterfly monitoring, we have produced the following guide.
Manual for Butterfly Transect Counts
Transect counts are the main method used in the European Butterfly Monitoring Schemes. You can download the Manual for Butterfly Transect Count (English) to learn how to use this method. In this Manual, you will find useful information about monitoring butterflies with the transects including, how to select a place to monitor, where to set up your transect route, which simple rules to follow for a transect visit, and how to submit your records.
This Manual has been translated into the following languages:
- Bulgarian - Portuguese
- Czech - Polish (a Manual adaptation for Poland)
- Danish - Romanian (former version BCE Manual)
- Hungarian (former version) - Spanish
- Italian
BUTTERFLY IDENTIFICATION
Basic Knowledge
- Discovering the Butterfly World
Do you need to start from the beginning? What is the difference between butterflies and moths? How can I start identifying butterfly species? This simple PDF is explained the basic knowledge to start with Butterfly Identification, discovering the different families of butterflies, and how to recognise the important characteristics.
Field Guides for butterfly Identification
The Field Guides of eBMS want to be useful to identify butterflies in the field in an easy and simple way. The butterfly species are organised by families and genus and there are symbols identifying useful characteristics to identify butterfly species easily. We created many different Field Guides for countries, regions, or areas.
Go to the page Field Guides on the menu to see the different Field Guides.
- Austria - Vienna & Burgenland
- Cyprus
- Greece - Corfu
- Italy - per regions
- Lithuania
- Malta
- Poland
- Portugal - Madeira
- Slovenia - commons and mountains species
- Spain - Common species Spain; Andalucía, Castilla-La Mancha and Galicia regions
Booklet Common Species Portugal Continental
This guide illustrates 60 common butterfly species in Portugal Continental and it is a great help for those just beginning to identify butterflies and want to participate in the Butterfly Census of Portugal. This booklet was produced with the ABLE project and with the help of Tagis - Centro de Conservação das Borboletas de Portugal
Enjoy the Identification Field Guide!
Butterfly Identification Guide from the European Butterfly Group
- You can find on the website of the European Butterfly Group, many different butterfly identification guides per group of species: Pieris (Whites), Small Fritillaries (Euphydryas), or Brimstones (Gonepteryx)
- Also you can find another interesting resource on this website: Butterflies of the Iberian Peninsula by Paul R. G. Browning a revised version contains a lot of information covering the butterflies of Portugal and Spain. You can download the pdf here
A Photographic Guide - Butterflies of Central Europe & Britain by Peter Gergely
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 hard copy can be bought at the Dutch Butterfly Conservation.
Butterflies of Central Europe & Britain. pdf
Identification on the website
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 identify 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
eBMS MATERIALS
eBMS Guidelines
Download the full guide (English) to see in detail step-by-step instructions for the key parts of the system (note that some elements of the guide will change when the site becomes fully live).
You can find this guide in several languages:
- Czech
- Lithuanian - Slovenian
- Portuguese - Spanish
- Romanian
Watch explicative videos on how to use the eBMS website on the BCE Youtube Channel
eBMS Leaflet
Here you can download an eBMS leaflet explaining the network together with the project ABLE for promoting butterfly monitoring in Europe. You can find this leaflet in several languages:
- Greek
- Turkish
- Spanish
- Italian
- Czech
**** If you want to produce similar materials in your country, help us with the translation, or have other suggestions, please contact us ebms@ceh.ac.uk