Looking a bit like a ragged version of a dandelion, mouse-ear hawkweed has lemon-yellow flower heads that are tinged with red at their outer edges. It likes grassy places with short turf and…

Selfheal is a low-growing, creeping plant that likes the short turf of grasslands, roadside verges or even lawns. Its clusters of violet flowers appear in summer.

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.

The guelder-rose is a small tree of hedgerows, woods, scrub and wetlands. It displays large, white flowers in summer and red berries in autumn, which feed all kinds of birds, including Bullfinches…

The knopper gall wasp produces knobbly red, turning to brown, growths, or 'galls', on the acorns of Pedunculate Oak. Inside the gall, the larvae of the wasp feed on the host tissues, but…

Guillemots really know how to live life on the edge – quite literally! They nest tightly packed on steep ledges and cliffs around the coast. This may sound like a strange nesting spot, but it…

This brilliant red and white sea slug would make the perfect nudibranch for a Christmas card image or perhaps a football team mascot!

A medium-sized diving duck, the goldeneye can mainly be spotted in winter when birds fly in from Northern Europe. Conservation efforts have helped small numbers of these birds to nest in Scotland…