The starling is a familiar garden visitor that has a beautiful purple-and-green sheen to its black feathers. It is famous for its wintry aerial displays - massive flocks can be seen wheeling over…

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.

Despite having the familiar sage-green leaves, Wood sage has very little scent, so is not a good cooking herb. It can be found on acidic soils on sand dunes, heaths and cliffs, and along woodland…

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.

Although introduced by humans, the fallow deer has been here so long that it is considered naturalised. Look out for groups of white-spotted deer in woodland glades.

The brimstone moth is a yellow, night-flying moth with distinctive brown-and-white spots on its angular forewings. It frequently visits gardens, but also likes woods, scrub and grasslands.

In May, our hedgerows burst into life as common hawthorn erupts with creamy-white blossom, colouring the landscape and giving this thorny shrub its other name of 'May-tree'.

In May, our hedgerows and woodland edges burst into life as Midland hawthorn erupts with masses of pinky-white blossom. During the autumn, red fruits known as 'haws' appear.