The green sandpiper is a very rare breeding bird in the UK, and is mainly seen on migration in autumn. Look out for it feeding around marshes, flooded gravel pits and rivers. It even likes sewage…

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.

This secretive bird is a member of the rail family, related to coots and moorhens. The breeding call, a rasping rattle, is given mostly at night, sometimes for hours on end.

This tiny gamebird is rarely seen, but its distinctive "wet my lips" call can be heard ringing out over areas of farmland on summer evenings.

Small-spotted catsharks used to be called lesser-spotted dogfish - which might be what you know them best as. It's the same shark, just a different name!

Dwarf milkwort is a rare plant of chalk and limestone grasslands with short turf; it can mainly be found in Kent, Yorkshire and Cumbria. It has bluish, sometimes pink, flowers atop its short stems…

A common tree, ash is familiar to many of us for its autumnal bunches of winged seeds, called 'keys'. It can be found in woodlands and prefers damp and fertile soils.

Sometimes called 'Marsh samphire', wild common glasswort is often gathered and eaten. It grows on saltmarshes and beaches, sometimes forming big, green, fleshy carpets.

The stonechat is named for its call, which sounds just like two small stones being hit together! It can be seen on heathland and boggy habitats.

The notch-horned cleg-fly isa horse fly dark grey in colour, with grey-brown mottled wings and intricately striped, iridescent eyes. There are 30 species of horse-fly in the UK; this is one of the…