With clear skies and a gentle breeze, there really wasn’t much debate about where we were going to head on our latest G88 recce. Carnaween, the highest point in the square at 521m, has drawn locals towards it for generations on the first Sunday in June. The Derry Journal of 1904 even provides an account of the annual pilgrimage—and of the fiddler brought along for the dancing at the peak.
We left the fiddle at home, but there was a lightness in our step as we started walking north from Letterbarrow FC, accompanied by Willow Warblers, displaying Meadow Pipits and the gentle comings and goings of bees and hoverflies. Several rather portly Drinker moth caterpillars basked on grass stems.
The direct approach up Carnaween is rather brutal, so we wound our way along the track up to the wind farm in the far NE of G88, and approached Carnaween along the ridge from the east, over some rough boggy ground. This approach meant that we got to visit the delightful Miley’s Lough en route. While trying to photograph a Tipula cranefly and other invertebrates, we spotted a tiny and rather non-descript moth floating in the water. Fishing it out barely alive, we grabbed a few close-ups, before letting it go. Identification later proved tricky, but its obvious bipectinate antennae were the clincher for Philedonides lunana (Northern Heath Tortrix)—new to G88 and only the fourth record for Donegal.
Climbing steadily, and approaching the top, the piping alarm calls of Golden Plover broke the silence. After lunch and stunning views on the summit, and having dutifully extracted the visitor book from its stainless steel repository and signed it, we climbed down to the crags just below the summit to check out some of the caves and recesses for ferns and bryophytes. A Raven loudly protested our presence and we soon found out why: its massive stick-built nest was jammed high into a rock chimney in the crags above.
We decided to leave it, and the caves, in peace for another day, carefully route-finding down the precipitous slope. The warm afternoon sun brought out Peacock butterflies in abundance along with the odd Small Tortoiseshell.
Walking back along the road, we detoured into small roadside quarries—sheltered spots well worth checking out more throughly on the BioBlitz. In one of these a brief glimpse of a disappearing tail had us recording Common Lizard—incredibly the first ever recorded in this square. So with at least four new species for G88 in the bag—Drinker moth, Northern Heath Tortix, Eristalis pertinax (a hoverfly) and the lizard—we were on a roll. Nevertheless, despite much attention to gorse bushes, the elusive ladybird remains at large. Join us on the 24th and 25th May and you could still be the very first to find one!
Leah and John
Dichodontium palustre (Marsh Forklet-moss) in a wet flush
