A winter visitor, the well-travelled Bewick's swan is the smallest of our swans. It has more black on its yellow-and-black bill than the whooper swan. Look out for it around Eastern England…

This wading bird is a rare visitor from North America, usually spotted in autumn.

The easiest way to find out if the nocturnal and well-camouflaged nightjar is about is to listen out for its distinctive 'churring' call at dusk. A summer visitor, it is most numerous in…

Did you know that there are coral reefs in the UK? UK seas are home to some amazing cold-water corals that form reefs on the seabed over 400m deep.

This streaky brown bird is a summer visitor to Britain, favouring open woodlands in the north and west.

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.

Look out for the white, umbrella-like flower heads of lesser water-parsnip along the shallow margins of ditches, ponds, lakes and rivers. When crushed, it does, indeed, smell like parsnip!

The land caddis is the only caddisfly in the UK to spend its entire time on land, with no stage in water. Look in oak leaf litter over winter to see the grainy cases of the larvae, in which they…