Great white egret
As the name suggests, this tall, white heron is considerably larger than the similar little egret. Once a rare visitor to the UK, sightings have become more common over the last few decades, with…
As the name suggests, this tall, white heron is considerably larger than the similar little egret. Once a rare visitor to the UK, sightings have become more common over the last few decades, with…
Darren Fawr is the largest and most spectacular of the Trust’s reserves in Brecknock. It consists of a steep hill-side, covered with loose, grey limestone scree, cliffs and an undulating hill-top…
The Yellow slug lives up to its name - its yellow body is mottled with grey patches. Often found in gardens and damp places in houses, it can be considered a pest, but is an important nutrient…
30 years ago, if Jeremy had fallen in the river then he’d have been more worried about being poisoned than drowned! A 1980s trawl survey found just one fish in the Billingham reach of the Tees,…
There's another world waiting beneath the waves. Seals weave in and out of sunlit kelp forests, cuttlefish flash all the colours of the rainbow, starfish graze along the muddy seabed and…
The all-black rook is a sociable bird, so can be spotted in flocks or nesting colonies, known as 'rookeries'. Unlike the similar carrion crow, it has a grey bill and 'baggy trouser…
A low-growing plant of sand dunes, heaths and grassy places, Common centaury is in bloom over summer. Look for clusters of pretty, pink, five-petalled flowers.
Bladder campion is so-called for the bladder-like bulge that sites just behind the five-petalled flower - this is actually the fused sepals. Look for it on grasslands, farmland and along hedgerows…
The Notch-horned cleg-fly isa horse fly dark grey in colour, with grey-brown mottled wings and intricately striped, iridescent eyes. There are 30 species of horse-fly in the UK; this is one of the…
Barnacles are so common on our rocky shores that you've probably never really noticed them. They're the little grey bumps covering the rocks that hurt your feet when you're…
The common carp is a very large fish that is popular with anglers due to its size and fighting spirit. It frequents ponds, gravel pits and lakes, but is not native to the UK, being introduced in…
The glow-worm is not actually a worm, but a beetle. Males look like typical beetles, but the nightly glow of a female is unmistakeable - lighting up to attract a mate in the darkness of their…