The beautiful pink and white bands of a Painted topshell make it easy to see where this little sea snail got its name!

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

The vast, green mats that sometimes cover the surface of still water, such as ponds, flooded gravel pits and old canals, are actually Common duckweed. A tiny, single plant, it groups together to…

Despite its name, Spurge laurel is not a laurel - it just looks like one! It has glossy, dark green leaves and black, poisonous berries, and can be found in woodlands in southern England, in…

The pyramidal orchid lives up to its name - look for a bright pinky-purple, densely packed pyramid of flowers atop a green stem. It likes chalk grassland, sand dunes, roadside verges and quarries…

The dark-blue flowers of Common milkwort pepper our grasslands from May to September. It can also appear in pink and white forms.

The hart's-tongue fern is a hardy fern of damp, shady places in woodlands. It also makes a good garden fern. It has simple, tongue-shaped, glossy, green leaves that have orange spores on…

The magpie is a distinctive moth with striking black and yellow spots on white wings. It is a frequent garden visitor, but also likes woodland, scrub and heathland.

The angel's wings fungus grows in overlapping clusters in the coniferous woods of Scotland and north England. Its funnel-like, white caps have no stems.

A streaky brown bird, the reed bunting can be found in wetlands, reedbeds and on farmland across the UK. Males sport black heads and a white 'moustache'.

These winter visitors are close relatives of the chaffinch and can often be found in the same flocks, where their white rump and nasal calls give them away.