This stocky wader is mostly a winter visitor to the UK, where it can be found on rocky, seaweed-covered coasts, often with groups of turnstones.

A member of the buttercup family, Common water-crowfoot displays white, buttercup-like flowers with yellow centres. It can form mats in ponds, ditches and streams during spring and summer.

The White admiral is a striking black-and-white butterfly with a delicate flight that includes long glides. It prefers shady woodlands where it feeds on Bramble.

The broad-bordered bee hawk-moth does, indeed, look like a bee! A scarce moth, mainly of Central and Southern England, it feeds on the wing and can be seen during spring and summer.

The marsh hair moss is the largest moss in the UK. Look out for it in damp woodland and on boggy heathlands where it forms large, green and spikey 'cushions'.

The thresher shark is a migratory species and passes through UK waters in the summer months. If you’re lucky, you might see this magnificent shark jump high out of the water in to the air.

These winter visitors are close relatives of the chaffinch and can often be found in the same flocks, where their white rump and nasal calls give them away.

This black and grey solitary bee takes to the wing in spring, when it can be seen buzzing around burrows in open ground.

The bright yellow daffodils that adorn our roadsides and parks are likely to be garden varieties. Head to a woodland or damp meadow in North or South West England, or Wales, to see a true wild…

The common spotted-orchid is the easiest of all our orchids to see: sometimes, so many flowers appear together that they create a pale pink carpet in our woodlands, old quarries, dunes and marshes…