However, last Friday I took it a stage further, when I got the opportunity to go into the wider countryside with an intrepid group of experts to do some real “mothing”.

The venue was Pease Dean, which is a Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve on the Berwickshire coast consisting of a wooded glen running from the caravan park back inland.

At the rendezvous, I was introduced to the others, who had come from as far afield as Peebles, Blainslie, Galashiels and Eyemouth, and after a quick reconnoitre of the area to decide the best places to site the traps, we began to lug the equipment. Being the only non-expert in the group, I was content to act as bearer and help to transport the heavy generators and other paraphernalia, while the others set everything up.

The two main traps were powered by generators and there was a few smaller battery-powered ones placed in different habitat types, to try to attract the biggest possible cross-section of species.

By the time all the preparation work was done, it was after 10pm and darkness was falling fast. Already several bats were circling overhead, feasting on the clouds of midges which were starting to bite. Thankfully I had some insect repellent wipes in my rucksack left over from a Highland holiday, which proved invaluable.

A few moths were seen skimming across the undergrowth, so it was time for the big switch-on. Not all moths attracted by the light go into the traps, so they are tended by people with nets who catch and identify these wayward flyers before releasing them.

Each trap is placed on a white sheet so that anything landing near it can be easily seen. Being the ill-equipped novice, I didn’t even have a net or head torch sported by the others, so I was content to sit on the edge of the sheet and catch anything that landed within reach, in a specimen jar.

My basic knowledge helped me to identify the most common arrivals, such as Silver Ground Carpet and Brimstone, and I was happy to pass the more difficult Pugs or “little brown jobs” to Andy, which were his forte.

After a while, a sizeable greyish moth with white hind wings, landed in front of me and I dutifully scooped it up into the jar and had a look. It was certainly one that I hadn’t seen before, but that wasn’t surprising, so I passed it to Andy. He began to emit some puzzled noises, so books were produced and we began to search through them to try and identify it. Eventually we both agreed that it was definitely an Alder Moth.

“Is that rare?” I enquired innocently. “Well, I’ve never seen one before,” he replied and I began to get excited. When the others arrived, it was thought that it might be a new Borders record and at the time of writing, it seems that it might be the case.

We stuck it out until around 2am when things began to go quiet and after checking and logging all the occupants of the traps and releasing them, it was reckoned we must have had more than 40 species.