This large shrike visits the UK in small numbers each year, passing through on migration or spending the winter here.

A ferocious and agile predator, the green tiger beetle hunts spiders, ants and caterpillars on heaths, grasslands and sand dunes. It is one of our fastest insects and a dazzling metallic green…

The variable damselfly looks a lot like the azure damselfly, but is much less common throughout most of the UK.

The garden tiger is an attractive, brown-and-white moth of sand dunes, woodland edges, meadows and hedgerows; it will also visit gardens. In decline, it is suffering from the 'tidying up…

A plant of chalk and limestone grasslands and sand dunes, Yellow-wort has butter-yellow flowers. Its distinctive leaves sit opposite each other, but are fused together around the stem.

Red squirrels are native to the UK but are a lot rarer than their grey cousins. They live in a few special places across the UK thanks to reintroduction projects.

Rare summer visitors, honey buzzards breed in open woodland where they feed on the nests and larvae of bees and wasps.

Common cow-wheat is a delicate annual that brightens up the edges of acid woodland and heaths with deep golden flowers in the summer.

The little grebe is a fantastic diver, but to help it swim underwater, its feet are placed towards the back of its body, making it rather clumsy on land. It only really comes ashore to breed.

Look for the small, pink, pea-shaped flowers of Common restharrow on chalk and limestone grasslands, and in coastal areas, during summer.