Butterfly chaser publishes field guide book

Jeffrey Belth has been chasing butterflies for as long as he can remember.

Belth, a Bloomington resident, has spent the past 12 years photographing, writing, compiling and designing his award-winning “Butterflies of Indiana: A Field Guide.”

“95 percent of the photos in it are mine,” Belth said. “I also designed the book, wrote the text. Basically I did the whole book on my computer here at home, working on it virtually every evening.”

Belth’s book recently won the award for Best Nature Guidebook at the 2013 National Outdoor Book Awards, “The outdoor world’s largest and most prestigious book award program,” according to its website.

“I was very happy and very gratified that my book was recognized, especially given the competition,” Belth said. “It’s just gratifying after the years I’ve put into it.”

The book is a field guide about butterflies in Indiana, Belth said. It contains photographs of the different species and details about their history and characteristics, as well as some information about butterfly gardening.

“It should help you identify butterflies in the state that you may happen upon when you’re on a hike, out in your yard, whatever,” Belth said.

Belth’s background in art led him to a love of photography, which he used to advance his first hobby.

“I had been photographing butterflies since the mid-1980s,” Belth said. “Around 1999-2000, I was taking more photos and traveling to new places in the state to get new species.”

Belth often dedicated anywhere from a single afternoon to an entire weekend to taking photographs, depending on where his search took him, he said.

He photographed some of the butterflies around the Bloomington area, others in Gary and in the northeast corner of the state where there are natural wetlands, he said.

“There were some that I had to go back multiple times to find,” Belth said. “There was one, the Eastern Pine Elfin down in southern Indiana, that I had to make five or six different trips over the course of five years before I got the photo.”

Other rare species that are out for only a couple of weeks out of the year were easier to find in other states, Belth said.

To photograph these butterflies, Belth took trips to Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida and Texas, Belth said.

Though he went on the majority of his trips alone, Belth was sometimes accompanied by his wife, Sandy, who also has a love of the outdoors. She works as an assistant naturalist with Monroe County Parks and Recreation, Belth said.

Now that his 12-year project is finished, Belth isn’t sure where he’ll go next.

“Right now I’m just taking some time off, so to speak,” he said. “It’s different. But it’s a relief to have it done. Very satisfying.”