Dark-edged bee-fly
Our largest and most common bee-fly, the dark-edged bee-fly looks just like a bumblebee, and buzzes like one too! It feeds on flowers like primroses and violets in gardens, parks and woodlands.…
Water vole by Terry Whittaker/2020VISION
Our largest and most common bee-fly, the dark-edged bee-fly looks just like a bumblebee, and buzzes like one too! It feeds on flowers like primroses and violets in gardens, parks and woodlands.…
Our most common hoverfly, the marmalade fly is orange with black bands across its body. It feeds on flowers like tansy, ragwort and cow parsley in gardens, hedgerows, parks and woodlands.
Siti and Amin love visiting Stocker’s Lake for a walk at the weekend. It’s just 15 minutes from where they live in Rickmansworth. The great outdoors is right on your doorstep.
What’s a little bit of mud between friends? Gary, Nathan, Tony and Adrian love getting stuck into volunteering – and it gives them an excuse to get a little bit mucky.
The eider is a large seaduck, famed for its soft, downy feathers that are not only used by the bird to line and insulate its nest, but also by humans to stuff our quilts and pillows. It nests…
The streamlined goosander is a handsome bird and a great fisher - its long, serrated bill helps it to catch and hold its slippery fish prey. It nests in riverbank trees, but can be seen on lakes…
Famed for its super-fast fishing dives into the sea, the northern gannet (or gannet) is a distinctive white bird with a yellow head and black wingtips. It nests in large, noisy, smelly colonies on…
A common hoverfly, the heineken fly has a distinctively long snout that enables it to take nectar from deeper flowers, reaching the parts other hoverflies cannot reach! It frequents hedgerows,…
Set up a ‘nectar café’ by planting flowers for pollinating insects like bees and butterflies
Living up to its name, the hairy violet is covered in fine hairs. Look for its delicate, violet flowers blooming from March to June on chalk grasslands, in particular.
The speckled bush-cricket, as its name suggests, is covered in tiny, black speckles. It can be found in scrub, hedgerows and gardens throughout summer. Males rub their wings together to create a…
This mysterious little bird is known for its haunting call and was once mistaken for witches by pirates off the coast of Wales! They travel thousands of miles every year to nest in their hobbit-…