Mariposa Nature Tours

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Mariposa Nature Tours

Expert-led butterfly and botany holidays

01/02/2025

We love creating colourful trip reports from our tours to share with our guests, featuring the lovely images they kindly share with us.

All of last year's reports are on our website, including that for this week's featured tour, Butterflies of the Italian Alps & French Mercantour.

https://www.mariposanature.com/site/assets/files/1822/butterflies_of_italian_alps_and_french_mercantour_2024.pdf

Just 2 places remain available on this superb tour this coming June. Led by a dream team of Paul Selby & Emmanuelle Juan, our guests will enjoy the best of Italian & French alpine butterflies, and we'll be generating a donation to Butterfly Conservation Europe to support their vital butterfly conservation work across Europe.

Images here kindly shared by and © Allan F & Emma W

27/01/2025

Good morning and welcome to the new week!

Our featured tour this week is Butterflies of the Italian Alps & French Mercantour - an opportunity to enjoy the best of both sides of the butterfly-rich Alps, with Scarce Fritillary a particular prize.

Lush mountain valleys, beautiful meadows and a fabulous array of butterfly species await us there, along with a quiet, comfortable hotel, excellent local cuisine, quiet roads and a never ending supply of fresh Alpine air.

This tour, like all of our butterfly tours, generates a donation to support the butterfly conservation work of Butterfly Conservation Europe across Europe.

Led by Paul Selby & Emmanuelle Juan, our guests are in the very best of hands to enjoy the butterflies of the region.

https://www.mariposanature.com/tours/butterflies/butterflies-of-the-italian-alps-french-mercantour

Images here © Clive Burrows, David Moore & Jon Dunn

20/01/2025

Our featured tour of the week is Fabulous Fuerteventura - Birds, Botany & Butterflies.

Fully booked for months, two places have recently opened up on the tour due to clients regretfully stepping aside on medical grounds.

Fabulous Fuerteventura features butterflies, birds and botany - the island is a wildlife wonderland, with lots to see, including some species either endemic or at the edge of their global range. With tour leaders Dave Fairhurst and David Gibbs, our guests have a dream team at the helm.

Naturally, the tour generates a donation to the wonderful
Butterfly Conservation Europe to support their butterfly conservation work across Europe.

This last minute availability of two places on this popular tour offers a chance to banish the winter blues in a naturalists' island paradise.

https://www.mariposanature.com/tours/wildlife/fabulous-fuerteventura

Images here © Chris Lodge

15/01/2025

Good morning from the Montes Universales! Anyone who's travelled with us will know the fine details matter to us, whether it's tour logistics, or the subtle beauty of the less obvious
.

Ostentatious emperors and blues are all very well, but Satyrids have it all going on! We love them all.

We will be returning for our annual butterfly-watching extravaganza in the Montes Universales later this summer, 31 July - 6 August. We hope to see you there!

https://www.mariposanature.com/tours/butterflies/butterflies-of-montes-universales25

Of course, like all of our butterfly-watching holidays, this tour will generate a donation to help fund the vital butterfly conservation work undertaken across Europe by the brilliant team at Butterfly Conservation Europe.

13/01/2025

Brr! Last week was a cold one!🥶Our featured tour this week, Butterflies of the Montes Universales, has the promise of warmth and sunshine, and some of the best butterfly-watching in all of Europe.

Based in the beautiful medieval town of Albarracín, we explore the unspoilt countryside of the Montes Universales, an area that's been spared the ravages of intensive agriculture. Butterflies abound here - it's like stepping back in biodiversity time.

Some species will be seen on the wing in their thousands during our visit; other species are scarcer, but we know the best places to find butterfly treasures here. As featured in Kate Humble's piece for
Telegraph Travel at the weekend, we're passionate about sharing these wonders and, in doing so, supporting the good work of
Butterfly Conservation Europe (BCE)- this tour, like all of our butterfly tours, generates a donation to BCE.

Full details of this flagship butterfly holiday, and the 2024 trip report, are on our website: https://www.mariposanature.com/tours/butterflies/butterflies-of-montes-universales25

Images here © Jon Dunn

11/01/2025

It was a total delight to have Kate Humble join us last summer for our Butterflies of the Montes Universales tour, and she's written a lovely piece all about her experience - published in today's Telegraph Travel.

You can join us there later this year!

Most importantly, in common with all of our butterfly holidays, this tour will generate a donation to the brilliant conservation work undertaken across Europe by
Butterfly Conservation Europe.

https://mariposanature.com/tours/butterflies/butterflies-of-montes-universales25

06/01/2025

Good morning, and welcome to the start of a new week!

Our featured tour this week is A Spring in Provence, a lovely mixture of birds, butterflies and wildflowers in southern France in April.

https://mariposanature.com/tours/wildlife/a-spring-in-provence25

Early spring is a wonderful time to visit the varied habitats of this famously beautiful area of France and, in the genial company of experienced leader Dave Fairhurst, and local naturalist Emmanuelle Juan, our guests are sure to enjoy a fabulous immersion in nature.

Also a sure thing, our friends at Butterfly Conservation Europe will receive a donation generated by this tour. We're delighted and honoured to support them and their crucial butterfly conservation work across Europe.

Full details of this fabulous tour are on our website. All images here © Jon Dunn & Eddie Marsh

01/01/2025

Good morning, and welcome to the New Year!

From all of us here at Mariposa, we'd like to wish you a happy, healthy and wildlife-filled year ahead. Here's to a year filled with good things and all you hope for.

Images © Jon Dunn

24/12/2024

It's the final day of the Mariposa , and what better Christmas butterfly is there than the Holly Blue?

With holly and ivy as larval foodplants, it strikes all the traditional festive notes. Happy Christmas, one and all!

https://youtu.be/l7eHtDtZ7hs

Image © Jon Dunn

23/12/2024

Day 23 of the Mariposa , bringing daily tidings of colour and joy to your timeline, features a that puts all Christmas decorations to shame - the spectacular Spanish Festoon. Feliz Navidad!

Image © Jon Dunn

23/12/2024

Our featured that will carry us into the New Year is Butterflies of Tenerife, our only early 2025 butterfly tour with remaining availability (3 places remaining).

A guaranteed departure in March, like all of our butterfly tours, it generates a donation to Butterfly Conservation Europe to support their excellent conservation work across the whole of Europe.

https://mariposanature.com/tours/butterflies/butterflies-of-tenerife-25

Images here © Clive Burrows & Stephen Culley

22/12/2024

What would be complete without the traditional three kings? By way of European royalty, today gives us three emperors - Purple, Freyer's & Lesser Purple Emperor. Everyone's day is made special by an encounter with one of these magnificent .

Images © Clive Burrows & Jon Dunn

21/12/2024

Two special bee for today's Mariposa - Ophrys lunulata & Ophrys pallida, both specialities of the amazing orchid-hunting island destination of Sicily.

In the darkness of the shortest day of the year, they're welcome promises of the light and colour to come in the New Year.

(Just two places now remain available on our super Orchids of Sicily tour, led by native Sicilian and internationally renowned naturalist Andrea Corso).

https://www.mariposanature.com/tours/botanical/orchids-of-sicily

Images © Jon Dunn

20/12/2024

Day 20 of the Mariposa , bringing a dash of colour and joy to your timeline, is a truly unique , a mosaic Chalkhill Blue, showing a mix of male and female markings on its wings. A brilliant find and image by guest Leo.

19/12/2024

Sometimes all that glitters really is gold!

A gentle reminder that our one-off offer of £200 discount off Autumn Bulbs of the Peloponnese ends midnight 24 December.

Running 23-30 October 2025, this tour's attracted a lot of enquiries and some early bookings, making it a guaranteed departure, and of course a guaranteed donation generated for Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland to support their excellent botanical conservation work.

Full tour details on our website - prior Mariposa guests also enjoy the usual £50 loyalty discount, amounting to £250 off the listed price of the tour if booked before midnight on Christmas Eve.

https://www.mariposanature.com/tours/botanical/autumn-bulbs-peloponnese

Images here, of golden Oriental Plane trees, and Sternbergia lutea, © David Gibbs

19/12/2024

Day 19 of the Mariposa celebrates an exciting moment for our guests on this year's Orchids of Sicily tour - the moment they discovered a Lesser Flamingo, potentially the first accepted record of a wild, vagrant bird for Italy.

Photo here recording the occurrence taken by guest Pete.

18/12/2024

Day 18 of the Mariposa features a Plain Tiger image taken by Gillian, a guest on our Butterflies of Tenerife tour earlier this year. These beautiful flaming , widespread in Africa and Asia, are only found at the very southern edges of Europe, and then sparingly.

Plain Tiger (Danaus chrysippus) © Gillian S

https://www.mariposanature.com/tours/butterflies/butterflies-of-tenerife-25

17/12/2024

Behind the door of day 17 of the Mariposa , bringing a daily dash of colour and joy to your timeline, is an outstanding orchid portrait by guest, friend, and professional photographer Paul Upward. This is Ophrys saliarisii, a lovely find on Rhodes earlier this year.

Image here kindly shared by and © Paul Upward Photography

Address

2 Ashtree Cottages

SA32EB

Opening Hours

Monday	09:00 - 17:00
Tuesday	09:00 - 17:00
Wednesday	09:00 - 17:00
Thursday	09:00 - 17:00
Friday	09:00 - 17:00
Saturday	09:00 - 17:00
Sunday	09:00 - 17:00

Website

http://www.mariposanature.com/

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