Topics: Habitats

Whether they are tumbles of soft rock home to a variety of invertebrates, or hard, soaring rock faces bustling with huge seabird colonies, cliffs may be challenging to explore but are well worth the reward.

• Coast
• Habitats

Sand dunes are places of constant change and movement. Wander through them on warm summer days for orchids, bees and other wildlife, or experience the forces of nature behind their creation – the raw power of a winter storm.

• Coast
• Habitats
• Marine

Skip the town beach and find an untamed shore to explore. Wild sand and shingle beaches are great places to see the variety of natural habitats and the amazing force of the elements that help shape them.

• Beach
• Coast
• Habitats

Wet woodlands in the UK can be wild, secretive places. Tangles of trailing creepers, tussocky sedges and lush tall-herbs conceal swampy pools and partially submerged fallen willow trunks, likely to deter all but the most intrepid enthusiast. These are some of our most natural woodlands.

• Habitats
• Woodland

Water-logged and thick with reeds and robust tall-herbs or tussocky sedges, fens are evocative reminders of the extensive wet wildlands that once covered far more of the lowlands than they do today.

• Habitats
• Wetlands

Found between water and land, reedbeds are transitional habitats. They can form extensive swamps in lowland floodplains or fringe streams, rivers, ditches, ponds and lakes with a thin feathery margin of reeds.

• Habitats
• Wetlands

Enormous flocks of geese, ducks and swans swirl down from wide skies to drop onto the flat, open expanses of flooded grazing marshes in winter. In spring, lapwing tumble overhead and the soft, damp ground speckled with cuckooflowers provides excellent habitat for waders probing for prey in the damp soil. By summer, when the ground is drier, some marshes are cut for hay or silage, but the ditches remain wet and come alive with dragonflies and other insects.

• Coast
• Grazing
• Habitats

Typical of softly rolling pastoral landscapes, the short, aromatic turf of lowland calcareous grassland is flower-rich and humming with insects in the summer. Its long use by humans lends it an ancient feel and it is often seen amongst prehistoric burial mounds, hill forts and old trackways.

• Chalk Grassland
• Grasslands
• Habitats

Sprinkled with diminutive, short-living flowers in spring and parched dry by July, this is a habitat of heathlands, coastal grasslands and ancient parkland.

• Grasslands
• Habitats

Generally found as part of lowland farms or nature reserves, these small, flower-rich fields are at their best in midsummer when the plethora of flowers and insects is a delight. Tiny reminders of the former abundance of wildflowers in the farmed countryside, they are now treasured for both their wildlife and for the unique rural traditions that developed as part of their farmed history.

• Habitats
• Meadows