Famed for its tapping in the middle of the night, supposedly heralding tragedy, the deathwatch beetle is a serious wood-boring pest. In houses, their tunnelling can cause major damage.

A fluffy-looking grass of rough grassland, roadside verges and disturbed ground, False oat-grass is very familiar and often overlooked; in fact, it can help to stabilise dunes and shelter small…

Look for the pinky-white flowers of the dog-rose in summer, and its bright red rosehips in autumn. It is a scrambling shrub of hedgerows, woodlands and grasslands.

Looking a bit like a ragged version of a dandelion, mouse-ear hawkweed has lemon-yellow flower heads that are tinged with red at their outer edges. It likes grassy places with short turf and…

Sea-buckthorn is a spiny, thicket-forming shrub of sand dunes. It's native to the east coast of England but considered an invasive species elsewhere. It is most obvious in autumn when it is…

The water vole is under serious threat from habitat loss and predation by the American mink. Found along our waterways, it is similar-looking to the brown rat, but with a blunt nose, small ears…

Our smallest breeding seabird, the storm petrel is barely larger than a house martin! They mostly nest among rocks or in burrows on small offshore islands.

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.

The fearsome-looking hornet may not be a well-loved insect, but it is actually much less aggressive than the common wasp. It is also an important pollinator and a predator of species that feed on…

The disc-shaped leaves and straw-coloured flower spikes of Navelwort help to identify this plant. As does its habitat - look for it growing from crevices in rocks, walls and stony areas.

The tiny, brown-and-white sand martin is a common summer visitor to the UK, nesting in colonies on rivers, lakes and flooded gravel pits. It returns to Africa in winter.