Look for Water avens in damp habitats, such as riversides, wet woodlands and wet meadows. It has nodding, purple-and-orange flowers that hang on delicate, purple stems.

A key species in the story of conservation, the avocet represents an amazing recovery of a bird once extinct in the UK. This pied bird, with its distinctive upturned bill, can now be seen on…

The dense, spiky tufts of Marram grass are a familiar sight on our windswept coasts. In fact, its matted roots help to stabilise sand dunes, allowing them to grow up and become colonised by other…

The song of the Roesel's bush-cricket is very characteristic: long, monotonous and mechanical. It can be heard in rough grassland, scrub and damp meadows in the south of the UK, but it is…

The common banded hoverfly has a fitting name: it is not only one of our most common species, its black body is also covered in yellow bands! It can be seen in many habitats from gardens to…

There are several species of spider that live in our wetlands, but the water spider is the only one that spends its life under the water. In its pond habitats, it looks silvery because of the air…

A familiar 'weed' of gardens, roadsides, meadows and parks, red clover has trefoil leaves and red, rounded flower heads. It is often used as fodder for livestock.

Pepper saxifrage is a classic plant of unimproved hay meadows and roadside verges. It's upright, branching stems carry umbrella-like clusters of creamy-yellow, flowers in summer.

The true fox-sedge is a rare and threatened plant in the UK. It relies on lowland floodplain meadows and damp habitats, which are rapidly disappearing. Look for reddish-brown flowers in summer.…