Dates & Prices

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Dates: 2nd – 9th May 2023 Confirmed departure

Price: £1,495 Full

Single Room Supplement: £150

Deposit: £150 per person

Price Includes: Accommodation, all meals, ground transport, services of guides & holiday report

Not Included: International travel, travel insurance, drinks & other personal items

Conservation Donation: Butterfly Conservation

Leader(s): David Moore + second guide Pau Lucio for a group over 6

Group Size: Minimum 4 & maximum 12 guests + 2 leaders.

Grade: Generally easy walking at a gentle pace.

Holiday Highlights

A unique tour designed to see an exciting range of localised and rare butterflies
Butterfly highlights include Provence Orange Tip, Portuguese Dappled White, Aetherie Fritillary, Monarch, Common Tiger Blue, Desert Orange Tip, Black-Eyed Blue, Spanish Fritillary, Lorquin’s Blue, False Baton Blue and Spanish Festoon
Led by the experienced and knowledgable David Moore & local guide Pau Lucio
Can be combined with our North Spain trip
Orchids and other spring flora and fauna to enjoy
Contribute to Butterfly Conservation

A new and unique spring tour in Southern Spain looking for a host of special butterflies!

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Your guides

David Moore has been visiting and studying the Alps for several years and as such his knowledge of the area and its butterflies is superb. David knows France very well and is an integral member of our French Alps and French Pyrenees guiding team. He crossed the border into Spain for this tour in 2018 and helped our group record over 100 species then and again in 2019, including all the rare and endemic species!

David is very active on the butterfly scene in general and is on the team of the popular UK Butterflies online community, where he coordinates the identification service element of the site.

An exclusive spring tour in Spain for a host of special butterflies!

We are delighted to offer this new tour to the southern Spanish region of Andalusia for a selection of spring butterflies, many of which cannot be found anywhere else in mainland Europe, or are scarce outside the Iberian Peninsula.

The huge array of landscapes and terrain in this large region offer the opportunity to see a variety of rare wildlife, and this tour will allow nature lovers to explore some of the special places from Cabo de Gata in the far south east, to Tarifa in the west, and Antequera in the north.

Flying in to Malaga, this two-centre holiday will commence in Cabo de Gata, just east of Almeria, where we will look for butterflies such as Common Tiger Blue, Spanish Marbled White, Desert Orange Tip, Black-Eyed Blue, False Mallow Skipper, Green Striped White and Spanish Gatekeeper. There will also be several interesting bird species, with flamingoes within a kilometre of the hotel and some unusual flora in the unique dune habitat at this extreme south-eastern point of Spain.

For the second part of the tour, we will base ourselves in Antequera, a city located 47km north of Malaga at the foot of the El Torcal mountain range, the limestone slopes of which are home to many rare orchid species and butterflies such as Spanish Fritillary, Lorquin’s Blue, False Baton Blue and Spanish Festoon.

This location will also provide the opportunity to travel to see Monarch, Provence Orange Tip, Portuguese Dappled White and the rare Aetherie Fritillary, whose flight period begins around a week before we arrive.

Whilst in high summer this area of Spain is generally dry and baking hot, in early May conditions are much more benign and the landscape much greener. Temperatures are usually in the 21 – 26c range, with cooler mornings than in July and August.

Travelling in early May is particularly convivial as this period falls outside the main holiday period and the roads, towns and sites are far less crowded. This should allow for 60-70 butterfly species to be seen along with orchids, birds and other interesting wildlife which inhabit this beautiful part of southern Spain.