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Dates: Friday 4th July 2025 Confirmed departure
Price: £100 Places available
Price Includes: Services of the guide, transport, trip report
Not included: Lunch, drinks & snacks
Meeting place: Burgess Hill Station
Leader: Kat Dahl
Group Size: Minimum of 3 and a maximum of 10 guests plus 1 leader
Conservation Donation: Butterfly Conservation & the Knepp Wildland Foundation
Holiday Highlights
- Enjoy a summer day out in Sussex for butterflies & other wildlife
- Exclusive access into ‘off-path’ private areas of the Knepp Wildland project
- Led by local naturalist & Knepp safari guide Kat Dahl
- We will visit key locations to look for our main target the Purple Emperor
- Other butterfly highlights we may see include White Admiral, Silver-washed Fritillary, Marbled White, and a host of other species
- Perfect for a family trip and equally excellent for a group of friends or natural history group gatherings
- Relaxed pace to fully appreciate the wildlife & landscapes, and ideal for photography
We invite you to join us for an exclusive day in Sussex, looking for ‘His Imperial Majesty’ the Purple Emperor, plus other butterflies!
Your Guide
Kat Dahl is a passionate naturalist born and bred, with a particular interest in insects, especially moths and butterflies. She is a wildlife guide for the Knepp Wildland project in Sussex, specialising in tours for Purple Emperor and other butterflies, and she is also a Learning Officer with the Berks Bucks Oxon Wildlife Trust, teaching people of all ages about wildlife. She has been a member of the Upper Thames Butterfly Conservation committee and is a member of their Conservation and Recording Team, and is an iRecord verifier for Upper Thames butterflies. She is also a member of Berkshire and Sussex Moth Groups, and leads the moth surveying for the Steyning Downland Scheme, a landscape conservation project in Sussex.
Kat has worked on projects to protect turtles in Cyprus and rehabilitate Snow Leopards in Kyrgyzstan, but is happiest moth-trapping, butterfly-watching and caterpillar-hunting, and sharing the wonders of nature with others.
Event details:
Sussex has long been a stronghold for the iconic Purple Emperor, and now the Knepp Wildland project, in West Sussex, has the largest population of these butterflies in Britain.
We will spend the morning exploring the semi-ancient woodlands of Southwater, made famous by Matthew Oates, Britain’s foremost Purple Emperor expert, in his book, ‘His Imperial Majesty: A Natural history of the Purple Emperor’, where he first found and fell in love with this charismatic species as a boy. We will be scanning the treetops for ‘His Imperial Majesty’ and, if we are lucky, catching sight of HIM coming to ground to feed on minerals. We will also search the woodland rides for White Admiral and Silver-washed Fritillary, and hopefully find Marbled Whites and a host of other species in the glades, and several dragonflies and damselflies too.
We will then head south, following the trail of the Purple Emperor to where they have colonised spectacularly successfully in recent years: the world famous Knepp Wildland project, now home to Britain’s largest population of Purple Emperor. We will spend the afternoon here, with exclusive ‘off-path’ access to explore some of this magnificent species’ prime breeding sites, including the location of the fabulous BBC David Attenborough series ‘Wild Isles’ footage of fighting Purple Emperor males. We might also see some of the large free-roaming mammals that ‘manage’ the vegetation here, such as Fallow and Red Deer, Old English Longhorn cattle and Tamworth pigs.
Event itinerary:
This day starts with meeting up at Burgess Hill Train Station, on the London to Brighton line. From here we will travel by minibus to the semi-ancient woodlands of Southwater, made famous by Matthew Oates, Britain’s foremost Purple Emperor expert, in his book, ‘His Imperial Majesty: A Natural history of the Purple Emperor’, where he first found and fell in love with this charismatic species as a boy. We will be scanning the treetops for ‘His Imperial Majesty’ and, if we are lucky, catching sight of HIM coming to ground to feed on minerals. We will also search the woodland rides for White Admiral and Silver-washed Fritillary, and hopefully find Marbled Whites and a host of other species in the glades, and several dragonflies and damselflies too.
We will then drive south, stopping to use facilities and purchase lunch and drinks.
We will then continue south, following the trail of the Purple Emperor to where they have colonised spectacularly successfully in recent years: the world famous Knepp Wildland project, now home to Britain’s largest population of Purple Emperor. We will spend the afternoon here, with exclusive ‘off-path’ access to explore some of this magnificent species’ prime breeding sites, including the location of the fabulous BBC David Attenborough series ‘Wild Isles’ footage of fighting Purple Emperor males. We might also see some of the large free-roaming mammals that ‘manage’ the vegetation here, such as Fallow and Red Deer, Old English Longhorn cattle and Tamworth pigs.
We will then drive back to Burgess Hill Train Station.
This day starts with meeting up at Burgess Hill Train Station, on the London to Brighton line. From here we will travel by minibus to the semi-ancient woodlands of Southwater, made famous by Matthew Oates, Britain’s foremost Purple Emperor expert, in his book, ‘His Imperial Majesty: A Natural history of the Purple Emperor’, where he first found and fell in love with this charismatic species as a boy. We will be scanning the treetops for ‘His Imperial Majesty’ and, if we are lucky, catching sight of HIM coming to ground to feed on minerals. We will also search the woodland rides for White Admiral and Silver-washed Fritillary, and hopefully find Marbled Whites and a host of other species in the glades, and several dragonflies and damselflies too.
We will then drive south, stopping to use facilities and purchase lunch and drinks.
We will then continue south, following the trail of the Purple Emperor to where they have colonised spectacularly successfully in recent years: the world famous Knepp Wildland project, now home to Britain’s largest population of Purple Emperor. We will spend the afternoon here, with exclusive ‘off-path’ access to explore some of this magnificent species’ prime breeding sites, including the location of the fabulous BBC David Attenborough series ‘Wild Isles’ footage of fighting Purple Emperor males. We might also see some of the large free-roaming mammals that ‘manage’ the vegetation here, such as Fallow and Red Deer, Old English Longhorn cattle and Tamworth pigs.
We will then drive back to Burgess Hill Train Station.
New trip – reviews will appear later
