ONE advantage of living here in Quethiock, after 50 years in Liskeard town, is the number of visitors that we get in our garden. Every day we have something interesting to see and to talk about.

Last week I went out the back door in the morning, as I always do for a look around the garden and there, and on the dining room window sill was a Brown Plume moth.

These moths look completely different from other moths as they stand up on long legs and hold their narrow wings, all folded up, at right angles to their body.

Usually they fly on hedgerows, grassy verges and along the edges of woodland and their caterpillars feed on Germander Speedwell plants like those that grow at the top of our driveway.

When I went out to get some lettuce leaves for lunch, I found a large cricket on one of the leaves. I photographed it and as far as I could tell it was a Saddle-backed Bush-cricket, named for the orange/yellow patch behind its head that looks like a saddle. Its call gives it another common name, Zi-zi, for the sharp double buzz it emits.

I spotted what I thought was a dead, Pygmy Shrew beside the pond so as I had my camera in my hand, I took a picture.

However, several minutes later I went to pick it up for the dustbin and it had gone.

Now, unless I am mistaken, the only consumer of Britain’s tiniest animal is the Barn owl as its taste does not suit other flesh eaters. I think maybe next door’s young cat caught it, but did not kill it, and so in my absence the shrew recovered and is hopefully still living in our garden.

We had a sunny morning and I was surprised with what I found on our plot.

A stick insect was climbing up the fence and, looking closely, I saw that it only had five legs. Well, the last time I saw a green stick insect was down by St Hugh’s Church some three years ago, and that one only had five legs, but was managing very well as it climbed up the stone wall.

Something that can be seen for most on the year is a garden spider that has caught a bee in its web.

It is a fact of life that, when any flying insect is caught in a spider’s web, the chances of escaping are virtually nil.

We have several shrubs in the garden that attract insects, butterflies, and now berries are on their branches we get several kinds of bird that come to eat them.

A female blackbird is one of them and they are close enough that we can observe them from our sitting room window.