As its name suggests, the smooth stems of soft rush are thinner and more flexible than those of hard rush. It forms tufts in wetland habitats like wet woodlands, marshes, ditches and grasslands.…

A member of the buttercup family, Common water-crowfoot displays white, buttercup-like flowers with yellow centres. It can form mats in ponds, ditches and streams during spring and summer.

The large, sunshine-yellow flowers of the yellow iris brighten up the margins of our waterways, ponds, wet woods, fens and marshes. Also called the 'flag iris', its outer petals have a…

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…

Listen out for the 'drumming' sound of a male snipe as it performs its aerial courtship display. It's not a call, but actually its tail feathers beating in the wind. Snipe live on…

Eyebright has small, white flowers with purple veins and yellow centres. It likes short grasslands, from clifftops to heaths, and is one of a number of species and hybrids that are hard to tell…

Although they might not look it, sea cucumbers like this one belong to the Echinoderm group and are therefore closely related to starfish and sea urchins

The rare Norfolk hawker is a pale brown dragonfly, with a distinctive yellow triangle on its body. Until recently, it was only found in unpolluted fens, marshes and ditches of the Broads National…