The courtship of the marsh harrier is certainly a sight to behold - wheeling and tumbling through the sky, male and female partners lock talons in mid-air. Look out for this rare bird over…

The appearance of semi-circular holes in the leaves of your garden plants is a sure sign that the patchwork leaf-cutter bee has been at work. It is one of a number of leaf-cutter bee species…

A stocky, little sandpiper, the knot can be spotted in estuaries from August onwards, migrating here from the Arctic where it breeds. Look out for it probing the muddy sand with its specialised…

The stiff, spiky and upright leaves and brown flowers of hard rush are a familiar sight of wetlands, riversides, dune slacks and marshes across England and Wales.

The Marsh helleborine is a beautiful orchid of fens, wet grassland and dune slacks. Growing in profusion in places, look for reddish stems and white-and-pink flowers.

Red squirrels are native to the UK but are a lot rarer than their grey cousins. They live in a few special places across the UK thanks to reintroduction projects.

Considered to be an early sign of spring, the song of the cuckoo sounds the same as its name: ‘cuck-oo’. It can be heard in woodlands and grasslands. Cuckoos famously lay their eggs in the nests…

Have you ever seen those worm-like mounds on beaches? Those are a sign of lugworms! The worms themselves are very rarely seen except by fishermen who dig them up for bait.