mariposanature.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Good morning, and welcome to a new week! Our featured tour this week is Spring Butterflies of the French Pyrenees, a guaranteed departure on 21-28 May 2025, and with it a guaranteed donation generated for @europebutterfly.bsky.social. (1/3) mariposanature.com/tours/butter...

submitted 3 hours ago • 1 comment

Most pitcher plants trap insects. This one (Nepenthes hemsleyana) has tubular pitchers in which bats roost. The bats enjoy purpose-built accommodation in which to rear their young; their rent is paid in the form of droppings, which nourish the plant.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Gorgeous female Kestrel in full hover mood while she hunted over farm land recently - they really are graceful flyers! Hope everyone has a good weekend ahead. #FlyDay 🪶 📷 🕊️ #photography #birds #nature #UKWildlife #EastCoastKin

submitted 2 days ago • 40 comments

How better to start the weekend than with some colourful, unabashed joy? Here's just a small selection of the Ophrys bee #orchids we'll be sharing with our guests on our popular Orchids of Rhodes tour in just a few weeks time.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

I’m busy writing reports for Species Recovery Trust. Amazing how you begin to see trends when surveys across many sites & years come together. Field Gentian seems sensitive to subtle changes in grazing (esp rabbits) & weather patterns. Hence big annual fluctuations overlaying longer trends.

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

We thought we'd share another selection of some of the myriad #butterflies that make the Montes Universales in Spain such an incredible place in which to wander, and wonder. Our Butterflies of the Montes Universales is a guaranteed departure & generates a donation to @europebutterfly.bsky.social.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

My latest book is all about the science and secrets of wildflowers. Out March 6th, available for pre-order now from all the usual places online. I hope you like it! x

submitted 5 days ago • 7 comments

Today's #FrohawkFriday, when we celebrate the #butterfly studies and artwork of the great FW Frohawk. Frohawk, writing over a century ago, observed that the Wood White had 'unaccountably' declined. Was this linked to changing woodland management practices, mirroring the decline of coppicing?

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

45/52 #OrchidsOfRhodes April 2024 #AnOrchidAWeek Serapias bergonii There were 💯s of them, bathed in early morning sunshine, under rows of ancient olive trees. But I’m posting just one, alone, spiralling clear of a billowing silver carpet of Starry Clover #orchids #wildflowers

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Fifty shades of grayling? Well okay, there aren't quite that many, but it's still a fine set of Satyrids we hope to see each summer on our #Butterflies of the Montes Universales tour! And the tour generates a hot donation to @europebutterfly.bsky.social. ☺️ www.mariposanature.com/tours/butter...

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Wow! We're loving the depiction of Plain Tiger. It's extraordinary to compare the accuracy of this - and the birds, recognisable to species 4,500 years later - with the liberties taken in considerably less ancient medieval European manuscripts and bestiaries.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Hiding in plain sight... we'll be seeing a lot of graylings of various kinds during our time in the Montes Universales in Spain later this summer, including Striped Grayling, owner of the best jagged, disruptive #butterfly camouflage in the business. They can melt unseen into dry, stony terrain...

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

A fortnight remains before the closing date for applications to become @bsbibotany.bsky.social's first admin officer - a job that will play a central, pivotal role in enabling much of the brilliant work that BSBI undertake every year. And what a team the successful applicant will be working with! 💚

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Butterfly fact 11. Males emerge before females to find the best mates in a phenomenon known as protrandry. Brimstone males are seen first in spring because they are active at slightly lower temperatures, females wake up a few days later. Read more in ‘Butterflies:’ from @chiffchat.bsky.social

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Snowdrop walk to Mulgrave Castle today. Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage & Primrose (& Snowdrop) for #wildflowerhour - and Scarlet Elf Cap for more colour. @bsbibotany.bsky.social

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Good morning, and welcome to a new week! Our featured tour this week is #Butterflies of the Montes Universales - a flagship tour of ours, to an area of Spain that's like stepping back many decades in time such is the sheer #butterfly abundance there. (1/3) mariposanature.com/tours/butter...

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

The little violets' heads bowed on their stems, The pre-dawn gossamers, all dew and scrim And star-lace Seamus Heaney, 'Mycenae Lookout', The Spirit Level, Faber & Faber, 1996. Violas support the larvae of 24 species of invert: 20 of them are Lepidoptera. #Invertebrates

submitted 19 days ago • 3 comments

Our dear friend @haggewoods.bsky.social regularly posts fabulous, insightful pieces about wildflowers and the invertebrates that rely upon them, combining an ecologist's expertise with the soul of a poet. If you're not already following Linden on BlueSky, we heartily recommend you do so!

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Hooray! Service update, our website is visible again to internet users in the UK as well as around the rest of the world: www.mariposanature.com We'll carry on working on that new orchid tour. One of several new ones we hope to launch this year. 😊 #BSBICorporateSponsor

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

We're aware that for UK internet users, our website (and thousands of others hosted by the same DNS) is currently unavailable. It's still there, working fine, for all outside the UK or using a VPN, and will be back for UK users soon. We're using the downtime to work on an exciting new orchid tour!

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Good morning everyone - wishing you all a fine weekend ahead, and hopefully a chance to bump into an early butterfly or two. Last weekend we let our newsletter subscribers know the great news that Kate Humble has joined Team Mariposa - so today we're sharing that more widely. We're delighted! (1/2)

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Today's not only Valentine's Day, but also #FrohawkFriday, when we share the love for the great FW Frohawk's butterfly artwork and studies. Over 100 years ago, he was creating this gorgeous Orange-tip plate for his seminal #butterfly book. His affection for this spring herald echoes down the years.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Looking forward to talking about the amazing @bsbibotany.bsky.social database and plant atlas.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Alpine orchids are red, Trumpet gentians are blue, We're off to the Picos, We'd love you to come too! Our featured tour of the week, Spring Wildflowers of the Picos de Europa, provides ample opportunities to feel the love blossom for alpine wildflowers of all shapes, sizes and colours. (1/2)

submitted 10 days ago • 2 comments

44/52 #OrchidsOfRhodes April 2024 #AnOrchidAWeek Orchis anatolica and friends High on a Rhodes hillside, these tiny splashes of colour were tucked out of the wind in the gaps between low growing shrubs, clinging on in dry gravelly soil #orchids #wildflowers

submitted 10 days ago • 2 comments

And this! Who wants a dozen red roses when they can have all the wildflower pleasure that @bsbibotany.bsky.social membership brings with it?

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Heading for home and totally forgot it's Valentine's Day tomorrow? Is there a wildflower lover in your life? Rather than a bunch of tired roses from the garage forecourt, you could treat them to a day of #orchids with @thenewgalaxy.bsky.social this summer... www.mariposanature.com/tours/botani...

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

Curating a Starter Pack that will hopefully be useful to folk coming over to BlueSky and looking for all of the UK conservation orgs and recording societies go.bsky.app/Nget1LP Will keep adding to this. DM or reply to be added and please share.

submitted 11 days ago • 19 comments

Not just wildflowers! While our current featured tour of the week, Spring Wildflowers of the Picos de Europa, will certainly deliver a kaleidoscope of them, we always like to look at the bigger picture. Surrounded by magnificent scenery like this for the week, it would be hard not to...

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Do you think butterflies are beautiful? You can help researchers at the University of Florence understand why by taking this online quiz. It only takes a few minutes. Thanks in advance www.unveiling.eu/en_US/

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment