Fingers crossed that July’s burst of searing sunshine – the delayed “barbecue summer” the Met Office promised us last year? – has boosted the flimsy survival chances of our butterflies and their lesser cousins, the moths.

After 18 months of appalling weather, a wet summer followed by a wet winter and then the coldest spring for 50 years – these fragile creatures were in grave danger, with some species on the verge of extinction.

Everyone loves butterflies (with the exception of gardeners for cabbage whites) but many of us know little about moths possibly because they tend to be nocturnal and rarely show the flamboyant exuberance of butterflies.

But conservationists are growing increasingly concerned about the widespread habit of killing any moth on sight because we fear they (or rather their larvae) will eat our stored clothes.

In fact, there are some 2,500 species of moths in the UK and only two of them damage clothing. The rest do important jobs, like helping, pollinate our crops – vitally important now that the honey bee is in sharp decline for reasons unknown – and, sadly, act as an important food source for song birds.

Many moths over winter in houses or outbuildings: there are always some in my cellar. How they get in is a mystery – but we never kill them.

Keep mothballs in your wardrobe if you must but, pretty please, don’t splat the rest.