This brown seaweed lives high up on rocky shores, just below the high water mark. Its blades are usually twisted, giving it the name Spiral Wrack.

A fierce pirate of the sea, the great skua is renowned for stealing fish from other seabirds and dive-bombing anyone that comes near its nests. It breeds on the Scottish Isles.

A great way to get up close and personal with the magnificent osprey is via one of the many nestcams set-up in the places that it breeds: Scotland, Cumbria, Wales and the East Midlands.

Flitting about the house in summer, the gangly, brown daddy longlegs is familiar to many of us. They are a valuable food source for many birds.

A delicate wader, Red-necked phalaropes are as comfortable swimming as they are on land. Unusually for birds, the females are more brightly coloured than the males.

The common sandpiper breeds along rivers, and by lakes, reservoirs and lochs in upland Scotland, Northern England and Wales. It can be spotted as a passage migrant at many inland wetlands across…

Living up to its name, the shoveler has a large and distinctive shovel-like bill which it uses to feed at the surface of the water. It breeds in small numbers in the UK, but is widespread in…

Known as the phantom of the forest, goshawks can fly through the trees at up to 40km per hour as they hunt birds and small mammals.

The eel is famous for both its slippery nature and its mammoth migration from its freshwater home to the Sargasso Sea where it breeds. It has suffered dramatic declines and is a protected species…

The redshank lives up to its name as it sports distinctive long, bright red legs! It feeds and breeds on marshes, mudflats, mires and saltmarshes. Look out for it posing on a fence post or rock.…