As we had managed to book the same cottage for our fourth visit to the Burren it meant that we were able to take several items with us to make the experience a little easier.
At home we are set up to record moths where everything needed is at hand and we are prepared for most things irrespective of what the weather throws at us.
Holiday cottages however do not cater for moth trapping specifically so there is always the need to adapt to the situation and being forewarned is forearmed as they say.
Our hope on this visit was to record the Burren Green as the flight season and location should give us a good chance.
Unfortunately, mentioned in our news’s flash, it wasn’t to be and being told by the county recorder on our return to the UK that they had been recorded in our area a few days later only serves to encourage us to return next year.
Our trip however was far from disappointing as we managed several new records which we are unlikely to see at home, most of which were recorded on walks as oppose to in the trap.
As eluded to in my previous post for the Burren, bats can be found in numbers at our location and almost certainly have an affect on the numbers recorded in the trap.
The first field record was on our very first walk where I only managed a couple of shots of what we discovered later to be a Bordered Grey whilst practicing with my new Bridge camera on the plentiful Grayling butterflies flitting from rock to rock.
The second was a Straw Belle which we came across whilst researching the Slievecarran Loop walk which we have still to tackle.
Although excited by our luck we saw quite a number of these moths on a walk later in the week where a colony obviously exists.
The icing on the cake for us was a moth we recorded during the completion of the second half of the Black Head Loop.
We had decided that 18 miles was just a tad too far for us to attempt in one go so decided to split it into two by using the road which follows the Caher River.
This was the second leg of the loop for us as we had already completed the first half earlier in the week which, to say the least, caused some concern towards the end of the trek.
In short, we had decided that by splitting the walk this way we would end up with two manageable 9-mile walks not the 12-mile slog we ended up doing.
If only we had got the maths (math) right and attacked it the right way around it would I feel have been rather more enjoyable as we would have got the hardest part out of the way at the beginning when not quite so tired.
On our return home we had a good laugh about our mistake and the memory of any discomforted was soon forgotten when we recorded the Scotch Annulet during the second leg.
Hopefully we will return to the Burren next year and, with the luck of the Irish, record the elusive Burren green and finally complete the Slievecarran loop.
All our catches for the fortnight commencing the 14th July are now complete on the reports section of our site.