After seeing the Royal Tern, Dave, Paul & I decided to head for Inch Beach on the Dingle peninsula rather than dash for the Rosslare ferry & a return to the UK. Dave & Paul were keen to run the Moth trap they had brought & I was keen to head to any potential Birding spots on the West coast. Inch Beach is a great looking sandy peninsula that sticks out about two or three miles into Dingle Bay on the South side of the Dingle peninsula.
Inch Beach: What a stunning beach
Inch Bay
There was a good roost of Gulls on the beach, but I failed to find any interesting Gulls in the flock.
Inch Beach: Looking towards Slea Head
The drawback with Inch Bay was it was still school holidays & there is limited accommodation next to the beach. In the end, we found one room with B&B for Dave & Paul within walking distance of the beach. Dave set the Moth trap running around dusk & they were planning on an early start to check it at dawn. I ended up in the next small town of Annascaul, about five miles further up the road. My priority as sole driver, was to get a good nights sleep, rather than an early start to check Moth trap. After breakfast in my B&B, I headed back to collect Dave & Paul. They had had a good night with the Moth trap with a Portland Moth as the highlight.
Portland Moth: This appears to be the first record from Inch Beach for around fifty years & was released soon after
I had assumed this was named after Portland in Dorset, but apparently
coincidentally Martin Cade caught one at the Portland Bird Obs only a
few days later which is only the second island record of modern times. It is named after the Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of
Portland who was an Eighteenth century aristocrat & who had the
largest natural history collection of the period.