Listen out for the 'drumming' sound of a male snipe as it performs its aerial courtship display. It's not a call, but actually its tail feathers beating in the wind. Snipe live on…

Found in ponds and marshes, the fragile look of the Common water-measurer belies its fierce nature. A predator of small insects, it uses the vibrations of the water's surface to locate its…

The fluffy, white heads of common cotton-grass dot our brown, boggy moors and heaths as if a giant bag of cotton wool balls has been thrown across the landscape!

Sometimes called 'Marsh samphire', wild common glasswort is often gathered and eaten. It grows on saltmarshes and beaches, sometimes forming big, green, fleshy carpets.

The common spotted-orchid is the easiest of all our orchids to see: sometimes, so many flowers appear together that they create a pale pink carpet in our woodlands, old quarries, dunes and marshes…

Look for the small, pink, pea-shaped flowers of Common restharrow on chalk and limestone grasslands, and in coastal areas, during summer.