Moths

Before this year I had never really been interested in moths, but then I went to Suffolk  with Gideon for a week. and there was a pair of very bright spot lights there. On my second night there we were walking past the lights when I saw a nice looking small moth sitting there, when I got closer I saw that there were a fair few other moths landed, as well as about 100-150 very small moths flying around the lights. While looking around at them all, I saw the biggest moth I had ever seen, so I ran back to get my camera. When we got back it was still sitting fairly high up so it was hard to get a good photo of, after a bit of hard work I got an ok photo so we went back in to try and  ID it. It did not take long to get an ID, it was a pine hawk-moth.

 After that we spent every other night of the trip out there. finding some great looking moths such as, White satin, Poplar hawk moth, Sallow kitten, Pretty chalk carpet, Oak hook tip, Dusky sallow, Shuttle shaped dart, Swallow tailed, Magpie moth. As well as, Coxcomb, Pale, Pebble, and Swallow prominent.

After getting back from the trip I had a new found fascination for moths. So the day after I got back home to Kerry in August I started looking for stuff to make some kind of moth trap out of, in the end all I could find was a whitish sheet and a borrowed 500 watt halogen light. On my third night home I put out the light for the first time and sat out with it till 2am in the morning, getting some lovely moths, such as, Small Rufous, the Flame, Flame shoulder, Purple bar, Willow beauty, Brimstone, The Uncertain. as well as Flame, Garden, Common, Dark-barred twin spot,and Oblique carpet. And the highlight of the night, a Pale prominent.

After that I had a very odd nights mothing, I had very few moth species come to the trap, but I had a count of 32 Angle shades on one Buddleia plant as well as another 7 on other plants, which as I had only seen 2 in the last 5 days  I thought it was very odd.

Over the next week I had some great nights mothing. One night there were so many moths that I lost track of time and did not get to bed until 4.30 in the morning. In that week I had same Great moths such as, Silver Y, Early thorn, Lesser swallow prominent, Twin-spot carpet, Yellow barred brindle, Pink barred sallow, The Herald, Ear moth, Lead belle, Small phoenix, Dark spectacle, Feathered thorn, Brown China-mark, LBBY Underwing, Mompha locupletella, Evergestis pallidata and Cydia ulicetana

After that the light stopped working for about a week. When at last I got the light working again I had my best ever nights mothing in Ireland, setting the light up at 10.30pm and staying out until about 3.40 in the morning, In the first half of the night I had some very nice moths including, Pine carpet, Spruce carpets, 3 Red-green carpets, Green carpet, November moth, Pinion-streaked snout, August Thorn. In the second half of the night I saw the real highlights of the night, being. Treble-bar, 5 Black rustics, Green-brindled Crescent, Merveille du Jour, Frosted orange, and a Gem.
It was not until the night after that I found the best Moth of all, a Flounced chesnut which after checking I found out was the first one ever reported in Kerry.

Snow bunting

I had a great trip to England last week, on my last day of the trip I went to Newhaven  Harbour with Gideon. We were up at 5.40 and on site just after sunrise, so we headed to the Pier to look for Turnstones and Purple Sandpipers as they are almost guaranteed there in winter and finding them isn't usually that hard. It only took a few minutes to find them but they were in the shade below the pier so getting photos was not easy, still they are always lovely to watch, As they were not showing very well I thought I would get the scope out and see if I could find anything out at sea, but other than 2 Cormorants some Great crested grebes and a Shag there was nothing other than gulls, so we walked down next to the beach to see if we could find anything nice. We saw a few Stonechat, Reedbunting, and some Skylarks as well as lot's of finch flocks.
Then while watching one of the Finch flocks i saw a larger bird with big wing-bars fly over us, My first thought was Snow bunting but I thought it looked a bit too big, Then Gideon called Snow bunting, and after very excitedly approaching where it had landed I saw it, A lovely winter male Snow bunting just sitting there in the shade, So we moved around and waited, hoping for it to come closer, and thankfully it did, The next four hours were spent watching and photographing it. After crawling on wet shingles and some very sharp rocks, we at times managed to get within 10 foot of him. He seemed to like sitting behind things making it hard to get a good photo, but even with it sometimes hiding it was an amazing bird to see