My secret garden
Rowan loves the fresh smell and sight of the buttercups in the wildflower meadows at Besthorpe. It's a special place because there are precious few spots like this where she can spend time…
Water vole by Terry Whittaker/2020VISION
Rowan loves the fresh smell and sight of the buttercups in the wildflower meadows at Besthorpe. It's a special place because there are precious few spots like this where she can spend time…
Freshwater pearl mussels spend their adult lives anchored to the river bed, filtering water through their gills and improving the quality of the water for other species.
The shiny, translucent porcelain fungus certainly lives up to its name in appearance. It can be seen growing on beech trees and dead wood in summer and autumn.
The raven is famous for being the imposing, all-black bird that guards the Tower of London. Wild birds live in forests, and upland and coastal areas in the north and west of the UK.
Their empty, delicate pink or yellow shells can often be found washed up on beaches, but the animals themselves live buried in the sand all around the coasts of the UK.
Red-necked grebes occasionally attempt to nest in the UK, but they're more often seen as winter visitors to sheltered coasts.
With a silvery body, and purple, pink and bluish streaks down its flanks, the rainbow trout lives up to its name. Popular with anglers, it is actually an introduced species in the UK.
Wavy hair-grass lives up to its name: its fine, hair-like leaves and delicate flower heads can be seen shaking in the breeze of a windswept moorland or heathland.
Forests of kelp sway in shallow sunlit waters, offering shelter to a host of sea life from tiny worms to juvenile fish.
The Atlantic salmon spends most of its life at sea, but makes an epic journey back to the river or stream in which it hatched to spawn. Look out for it in freshwater rivers in the north and west…
The black-and-white barnacle goose flies here for the 'warmer' winter from Greenland and Svalbard. This epic journey was once a mystery to people, who thought it hatched from the goose…