A great way to get up close and personal with the magnificent osprey is via one of the many nestcams set-up in the places that it breeds: Scotland, Cumbria, Wales and the East Midlands.

An unmistakeable insect of heaths, sand dunes and grasslands, the Emperor moth is fluffy, grey-brown, with big peacock-like eyespots on all four wings. Males can be seen during the day, but…

The pretty Deptford pink is a very rare flower that is very vulnerable to the loss of our traditional grassland and farmland habitats. It can only be found in a few places in England and Wales.…

The willow tit lives in wet woodland and willow carr in England, Wales and southern Scotland. It is very similar to the marsh tit, but has a distinctive pale panel on its wings.

The St Mark's fly is small, black and shiny. It is so-called because it emerges around St Mark's Day, April 25th. Large numbers of adults can be found in woodland edges, hedgerows,…

Named for its three bull-like horns, the minotaur beetle is a large dung beetle found on grassland and heathland. Adults drag dung back to their nests for their larvae to feed on.

The common sandpiper breeds along rivers, and by lakes, reservoirs and lochs in upland Scotland, Northern England and Wales. It can be spotted as a passage migrant at many inland wetlands across…

Living up to its name, the shoveler has a large and distinctive shovel-like bill which it uses to feed at the surface of the water. It breeds in small numbers in the UK, but is widespread in…

The oak marble gall wasp produces brown, marble-shaped growths, or 'galls', on oak twigs. Inside the gall, the larvae of the wasp feed on the host tissues, but cause little damage.

The river lamprey is a primitive, jawless fish, with a round, sucker-mouth which it uses to attach to other fish to feed from them. Adults live in the sea and return to freshwater to spawn.