Red mullet
A strikingly beautiful fish, it is not hard to see where the ‘red’ mullet gets its name from!
A strikingly beautiful fish, it is not hard to see where the ‘red’ mullet gets its name from!
It’s easy to see where these butterflies get their name – the males have bright orange tips on their wings! See them from early spring through to summer in meadows, woodland and hedges.
The lightbulb sea squirt is common around much of the UK. Its easy to see where its name came from!
The cormorant is an excellent fisher. It is most easily spotted when it is perched, stretching its wings out in the sun to dry after a dive. The UK holds internationally important wintering…
The beautiful pink and white bands of a Painted topshell make it easy to see where this little sea snail got its name!
Listen out for the 'chattering' song of the reed warbler, while wandering the UK's lowland wetlands in summer. A small, brown bird, they are quite hard to see.
Did you know that there are coral reefs in the UK? UK seas are home to some amazing cold-water corals that form reefs on the seabed over 400m deep.
A member of the buttercup family, Common water-crowfoot displays white, buttercup-like flowers with yellow centres. It can form mats in ponds, ditches and streams during spring and summer.
Look out for the white, umbrella-like flower heads of lesser water-parsnip along the shallow margins of ditches, ponds, lakes and rivers. When crushed, it does, indeed, smell like parsnip!
The skeletons of deep-water corals form mounds that can support over 1,000 species of invertebrates and fish.
Get inspired for the Big Wild Walk with some stories from last year’s participants!
Ask any child – and most adults, come to that – to draw a spider in its home, and you’ll get a circular or polygonal web. Those orb-web spiders may well be the most obvious kind around our houses…