The common blue butterfly lives up to its name - it's bright blue and found in all kinds of sunny, grassy habitats throughout the UK! Look out for it in your garden, too.

Flowering rush is a pretty rush-like plant of shallow wetland habitats, such as ponds, canals and ditches. Its cup-shaped, pink flowers appear in summer, brightening up the water's edge.

The pink-footed goose is a winter visitor to the UK, feeding on our wetland and farmland habitats. About 360,000 individuals spend the winter here, making it a really important destination for…

The song of the Roesel's bush-cricket is very characteristic: long, monotonous and mechanical. It can be heard in rough grassland, scrub and damp meadows in the south of the UK, but it is…

The delightful fragrance of wild thyme can punctuate a summer walk over a chalk grassland. It forms low-growing mats with dense clusters of purple-pink flowers.

The common shieldbug was once restricted to Southern England, but has since been moving northwards and is now quite widespread. It can be found in all kinds of habitats from gardens to farms.

The grayling is one of our largest brown butterflies and a master of disguise - its cryptic colouring helps to camouflage it against bare earth and stones in its coastal habitats and on inland…

A scrambling plant, Bush vetch has lilac-blue flowers. It is a member of the pea family and can be seen along woodland edges and roadside verges, and on scrubland and grassland.

You are likely to spot the smooth newt in your garden or local pond. It breeds in water in summer and spends the rest of the year in grassland and woodland, hibernating over winter.

The upright, blue flower spikes of Viper's-bugloss can be spotted on chalk grassland, sand dunes, cliffs and banks. Its spotted stem is thought to resemble a viper.

Forming mats of straight, bright green stems, Common spike-rush does, indeed, look like lots of tightly clustered 'spikes' near the water's edge of our wetland habitats.

If seen up close, the glittering Ruby-tailed wasp is, perhaps, one of the UK's most beautiful insects. A solitary wasp, it can be found in sandy and rocky habitats like quarries, outcrops and…