Yarrow can be found in many grasslands, from lawns to meadows, its flat-topped clusters of flower heads appearing from June. Cultivated varieties are garden favourites.

With its fluffy-looking, light blue flower heads, sheep's-bit is a pretty plant of dry grassland, heaths and clifftops. Sometimes carpeting an area, it is popular with nectar-loving insects…

Despite being considered a 'weed' of cultivated ground, the seeds of the Creeping thistle provide an important food source for farmland birds, many of which are declining rapidly.

It’s easy to identify this distinctive skate from the black and yellow marbled eye spots on each wing.

Living up to its name, the bullhead has a characteristically large, flattened head and a tapering body. Look out for it in fast-flowing, stony rivers and streams.

The linnet can be seen on farmland and heathland across the UK. But, like so many other farmland birds, linnets are declining rapidly, mainly due to agricultural intensification.

The bar-tailed godwit winters in the UK in the thousands; look for it around estuaries like the Thames and Humber. In spring, the males display arresting breeding plumage, with brick-red heads,…

Our most diminutive falcon, the merlin is a pretty bird of prey. It chases small birds, flying low to the ground or hovering in the breeze because of its small size. Resident merlins are joined in…

The large white is a common garden visitor - look out for its brilliant white wings, tipped with black.

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!

Greater burdock is familiar to us as the sticky plant that children delight in, frequently throwing the burs at each other. It actually uses these hooked seed heads to help disperse its seeds.

Looking like a short Dandelion, but with a much rounder middle, Colt's-foot is a 'weed' of waste ground and field edges that brightens up early spring with its sunshine-yellow…