If you have a garden pond, look out for the large red damselfly resting at the water's edge. As the name suggests, males are bright red with a black thorax, but females may be almost entirely…

The black-tailed skimmer is a narrow-bodied dragonfly that can be seen flying low over the bare gravel and mud around flooded gravel pits and reservoirs. It is on the wing from May to August.

A scarce tree of England and Wales, the large-leaved lime is the rarest of our native limes. It is tall and broad, and can be found in forests and parks, where it is frequently planted.

The soft, downy look of Yorkshire-fog makes it an attractive plant, even if it is considered a weed of cultivated land! It is also attractive to the caterpillars of the Small Skipper butterfly as…

Nudibranchs, also known as sea slugs, are much like their land-based relatives that you may spot in your garden. But, unlike your regular garden slug, the nudibranch can incorporate the stinging…

Sand eels are a hugely important part of our marine ecosystem. In fact, the fledgling success of our breeding seabirds entirely depends on them.

As its name suggests, giant hogweed it a large umbellifer with distinctively ridged, hollow stems. An introduced species, it is an invasive weed of riverbanks, where it prevents native species…

The eel is famous for both its slippery nature and its mammoth migration from its freshwater home to the Sargasso Sea where it breeds. It has suffered dramatic declines and is a protected species…