Our largest and most common bee-fly, the dark-edged bee-fly looks just like a bumblebee, and buzzes like one too! It feeds on flowers like primroses and violets in gardens, parks and woodlands.…

The small, brown Dartford warbler is most easily spotted when warbling its scratchy song from the top of a gorse stem. It lives on lowland heathland in the south of England, where it nests on the…

A common hoverfly, the Heineken fly has a distinctively long snout that enables it to take nectar from deeper flowers, reaching the parts other hoverflies cannot reach! It frequents hedgerows,…

Shag' is a very old name that means 'tufted' and refers to the small crest that this bird sports. Look out for it in spring and summer either diving for fish from the surface of the…

Bottlenose dolphins in British waters are the biggest of their kind – they need to be able to cope with our chilly waters! They are very sociable and will happily swim alongside boats, providing…

The English oak is, perhaps, our most iconic tree: the one that almost every child and adult alike could draw the lobed leaf of, or describe the acorn fruits of. A widespread tree, it is prized…

As its name suggests, the house martin can be spotted nesting in the eaves of houses in our towns and villages. Its intricate mud nests take days to build and are often returned to and used in…

Herb-Paris has four oval leaves set in a cross, with an understated crown of yellow-green flowers rising from the middle. This makes it quite a distinctive plant of ancient and damp woodlands on…

The large, sunshine-yellow flowers of the yellow iris brighten up the margins of our waterways, ponds, wet woods, fens and marshes. Also called the 'flag iris', its outer petals have a…

One of our prettiest and smallest bumble bees, the early bumblebee has a bright orange tail and lemon-yellow bands on its body. It is very common and can be found in all kinds of habitats in early…