Moths make sure of their place in this week’s Nature Watch report - but can you help photographer Ray Roberts identify this micro moth he found in his greenhouse?

I received a message from a Liskeard lady who told me that she found a Lords and Ladies with a yellow spadix. Well, this was a large cuckoo pint or Italian arum – Arum Italicum – that has a pale veined pattern on its dark leaves. This plant, according to Marjorie Blamey’s excellent book The illustrated Flora of Britain and Northern Europe is well established from Cornwall to South Wales.

Another moth had overnighted in my greenhouse and seemed reluctant to leave when I discovered it crawling around on the worktop. I would say its wingspan was probably around 12mm or half an inch, so I think it was what is known as a micro moth and is a night time flyer. That is as much as I know about it, but it had gone by the end of the day. Perhaps a reader can identify it for me?

However, when I went for a walk in the sunshine a I spotted a moth that I could name and it was a speckled yellow with a wingspan of around 30mm or about one and quarter inches. Now this moth was probably the friendliest that I have ever photographed because when it had settled on the vegetation and I took a picture of it, as soon as it heard the camera shutter it flew off and pitched about three metres along the hedgerow. Then it allowed me to take a couple more pictures before moving on again. It did this half a dozen times just to make sure of its place in Nature Watch.

Along the bottom of most of the hedgerows around the village there are lots of tiny red flowers of shining crane’s-bill – Geranium lucidum. So named for its glossy green leaves that are almost cut into five segments and its beak shaped seed pods have an explosive device that throws the seeds far and wide so the plant fills up lots of space on the hedge.

I walked as far as the small stream that runs down to join the River Tiddy and could see some yellow flags – Iris pseudacorus – out in bloom on the marshy part of the field beside the stream. I know of a large pond beside the River Seaton that gets almost completely surrounded by these flags on their tall stems that have narrow sword-like leaves and can grow up to a metre high. Sometimes there are three flowers on a stem and their cache of pollen is protected from the rain by umbrella-like stigmas, something that I am sure is appreciated by visiting bees and hover flies.

Walking home slowly – it was all uphill - I kept my eyes on the south facing hedge where I spotted some brown squash bugs. This is the second species of bugs that I have seen this year and hopefully, there will be several more species on the hedgerows in the coming weeks.