This sponge is found on rocky shores around the UK and looks like a thick bready crust (if you use your imagination a bit!).

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.

This wading bird is mainly a visitor on its spring and autumn migration, though a small number nest in Scotland.

The stinging nettle is a familiar and common plant, often firmly rooted in our memories after our first, hands-on experience - a prickling irritation that's not forgotten easily!

Just as the bluebells finish flowering in our woodlands, the rose-red blooms of red campion start to brighten up the woodland floor. Look for this pretty plant in hedges and roadsides, too.

The broad-bordered bee hawk-moth does, indeed, look like a bee! A scarce moth, mainly of Central and Southern England, it feeds on the wing and can be seen during spring and summer.

The ringed plover is a small wader that nests around the coast, flooded gravel pits and reservoirs. It is similar to the little ringed plover, but is a little larger, has an orange bill and legs,…

This black and grey solitary bee takes to the wing in spring, when it can be seen buzzing around burrows in open ground.

One of our most familiar spring flowers, the cowslip brightens up ancient meadows and woodlands with its egg-yolk-yellow, nodding blooms.

The Yellow star-of-Bethlehem is a woodland plant that lives up to its name - it displays starry, gold flowers in an umbrella-like cluster in early spring.

An uncommon hedgerow and woodland tree of central and eastern England, purging buckthorn displays yellow-green flowers in spring, and poisonous, black berries in autumn.