Flowering rush is a pretty rush-like plant of shallow wetland habitats, such as ponds, canals and ditches. Its cup-shaped, pink flowers appear in summer, brightening up the water's edge.

Famed for its tapping in the middle of the night, supposedly heralding tragedy, the deathwatch beetle is a serious wood-boring pest. In houses, their tunnelling can cause major damage.

Cross-leaved heath is a type of heather that likes bogs, heathland and moorland. It has distinctive pink, bell-shaped flowers that attract all kinds of nectar-loving insects.

The fearsome common backswimmer hunts insects, tadpoles and fish. It uses its oar-like legs to swim upside-down under the water's surface where unsuspecting prey can be found.

A fluffy-looking grass of rough grassland, roadside verges and disturbed ground, False oat-grass is very familiar and often overlooked; in fact, it can help to stabilise dunes and shelter small…

Escaped or intentionally freed from fur farms in the 1960s, the American mink is now well established in the UK. Its carnivorous nature is a threat to our native water vole and seabird populations…

With a population of 75 million, the field vole is one of the UK's most common mammals. Hidden among the vegetation of grassland, heathland and moorland, it is not as easily spotted as the…

Piddocks are a boring bivalve. No, we don't mean dull... we mean that it bores into soft rock, creating a burrow. In fact, they're the opposite of dull - they glow in the dark!

Wavy hair-grass lives up to its name: its fine, hair-like leaves and delicate flower heads can be seen shaking in the breeze of a windswept moorland or heathland.