They nibble at your best winter coat, and make an annoying noise when they pop themselves dead on lightbulbs. But it turns out that moths can be good for something – at least civil litigation solicitor Bob Heckford, who recently retired from Plymouth law firm Bond Pearce, seems to think so. Heckford is an amateur naturalist and has just discovered a new moth species in a Devonshire oak wood. He now boasts the signal honour of being (probably) the only solicitor to have a species of moth named after him: ectoedemia heckfordi. Apparently, it was the caterpillar’s emerald green colour that revealed that it was a new species – all the other larvae of native moths that live on oak leaves are white or colourless, don’t you know.

The adult moth, previously unknown to science and only the second new species to be discovered in Britain in the last 50 years, is black with a white stripe, and just 3mm long. Well spotted, Heckford; the legal profession’s answer to David Attenborough.