Considered a gardener’s best friend, hedgehogs will happily hoover up insects roaming in vegetable beds. Famously covered in spines, hedgehogs like to eat all sorts of bugs and crunchy beetles.…

Look for the wood warbler singing from the canopy of oak woodlands in the north and west of the UK. Green above, it has a distinctive, bright yellow throat and eyestripe.

This secretive bird is a member of the rail family, related to coots and moorhens. The breeding call, a rasping rattle, is given mostly at night, sometimes for hours on end.

The melodious song of the nightingale is the most likely sign of this bird being about. Shy and secretive, it sings from dense scrub and woodland, day and night.

A delicate, small plant of woodlands and hedgerows, wood-sorrel has distinctive, trefoil leaves and white flowers with purple veins; both fold up at night.

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.

At night, the pretty, white blooms of white campion produce a heady scent, attracting feeding moths. Look for this wildflower along hedgerows and roadside verges, and on waste ground.