Last month I took control of a vintage tiger moth biplane and flew over the Northamptonshire countryside.

Feeling like a latter day ‘Biggles’, wearing leather flying helmet and goggles (see photo) and gently bouncing on the buoyant thermals of a hot summer’s day I peered over the side of the open cockpit and gazed down nostalgically at the meadows and woods that I has explored as a boy and where I listened to cuckoos, yellowhammers, lapwings and larks.

On landing I reflected on how the classic aeroplane acquired its name.

The story goes that in the late 1920s a well-known butterfly and moth breeder and radio personality named L.

Hugh Newman who explained that they were having difficulty choosing suitable names for a series of light aircraft then coming off the drawing board.

Hugh Newman suggested the prefix of moth and soon after a succession of planes including tiger, leopard moth, puss moth, fox moth and others began to appear in the skies.

There are still many tiger moth aeroplanes flying but their name sake, the colourful garden tiger moth is, in common with many other moth species in steep decline.

Once common in gardens, the tiger moth, being nocturnal, is not often seen but its large hairy brown caterpillars known as ‘wooly bears’ were frequently encountered in the shrubbery.

My mother recounts how together with her sisters she would catch the caterpillars and tying a piece of cotton around their middle, take them for a walk down the garden path pretending that they were silken haired Pomeranian toy dogs!