The striking red crown, golden back, and bright yellow wings of the goldfinch make it one of our prettiest garden birds. It happily visits birdtables and feeders across the UK.

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 rare smooth snake can only be found at a few heathland sites in the UK. It looks a bit like an adder, but lacks the distinctive zig-zag pattern along its back.

A tussocky sedge, Greater pond sedge has stout, upright flower spikes, strap-like leaves and triangular stems. It prefers lowland wetland habitats on heavy soils.

As its name suggests, pendulous sedge has drooping form with long, nodding flower spikes that give it an attractive and soft look. It can be found in wet woodlands and along riversides.

Sand sedge is an important feature of our coastal sand dunes, helping to stabilise the dunes, which allows them to grow up and become colonised by other species.

The true fox-sedge is a rare and threatened plant in the UK. It relies on lowland floodplain meadows and damp habitats, which are rapidly disappearing. Look for reddish-brown flowers in summer.…

The Atlantic salmon spends most of its life at sea, but makes an epic journey back to the river or stream in which it hatched to spawn. Look out for it in freshwater rivers in the north and west…