This large, brown beetle can be seen swarming around streetlights in spring. They live underground as larvae for years and emerge as adults often in large numbers. Listen for their characteristic…

This stocky wader is mostly a winter visitor to the UK, where it can be found on rocky, seaweed-covered coasts, often with groups of turnstones.

Common sea-lavender can be found around our coasts on mudflats, creek banks and saltmarshes. Despite its name, its not a lavender at all, so doesn’t smell like one.

The sanderling scampers about the waves looking for marine crustaceans, fish and even jellyfish to eat. It visits the UK in winter from its Arctic breeding grounds, but can also be seen as it…

The azure damselfly is a pale blue, small damselfly that is commonly found around most waterbodies from May to September. Try digging a wildlife pond in your garden to attract damselflies and…

Named for its three bull-like horns, the minotaur beetle is a large dung beetle found on grassland and heathland. Adults drag dung back to their nests for their larvae to feed on.

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…