Familiar as the bristly plant that easily hooks on to our clothing as we walk through the countryside or do the gardening, cleavers uses its hooks to help it climb and to disperse its seeds.

The common rosefinch is a rare visitor to the UK, usually passing through in autumn.

The black garden ant is the familiar and abundant small ant that lives in gardens, but also turns up indoors searching for sugary food. In summer, winged adults, or 'flying ants', swarm…

Did you know that there are coral reefs in the UK? UK seas are home to some amazing cold-water corals that form reefs on the seabed over 400m deep.

A member of the buttercup family, Common water-crowfoot displays white, buttercup-like flowers with yellow centres. It can form mats in ponds, ditches and streams during spring and summer.

Unsurprisingly, the garden bumblebee can be found in the garden, buzzing around flowers like foxgloves, cowslips and red clover. It is quite a large, scruffy-looking bee, with a white tail. It…

Look out for the white, umbrella-like flower heads of lesser water-parsnip along the shallow margins of ditches, ponds, lakes and rivers. When crushed, it does, indeed, smell like parsnip!

This football-sized fungus can be seen in autumn, sometimes growing on grass verges.

This elegant wading bird is a rare visitor to the UK, though occasionally one or two of pairs will nest here.