Bee orchid
The bee orchid is a sneaky mimic - the flower’s velvety lip looks like a female bee. Males fly in to try to mate with it and end up pollinating the flower. Sadly, the right bee species doesn’t…
The bee orchid is a sneaky mimic - the flower’s velvety lip looks like a female bee. Males fly in to try to mate with it and end up pollinating the flower. Sadly, the right bee species doesn’t…
The Notch-horned cleg-fly isa horse fly dark grey in colour, with grey-brown mottled wings and intricately striped, iridescent eyes. There are 30 species of horse-fly in the UK; this is one of the…
This large green moth rests with its wings spread, so is sometimes mistaken for a butterfly.
The large white is a common garden visitor - look out for its brilliant white wings, tipped with black.
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.…
The appearance of semi-circular holes in the leaves of your garden plants is a sure sign that the patchwork leaf-cutter bee has been at work. It is one of a number of leaf-cutter bee species…
One of our largest and most impressive solitary wasps, the bee wolf digs a nest in sandy spots and hunts honey bees.
Despite its name, the large blue is a fairly small butterfly, but the largest of our blues. It was declared extinct in 1979, but reintroduced in the 1980s and now survives in southern England.
As its name suggests, the large skipper is bigger than the similar-looking small skipper! It can be seen in summer, resting on the long grass of grasslands, woodlands, verges and sand dunes.
The aromatic fragrance of Large thyme can punctuate a summer walk over a chalk grassland. It is an evergreen that grows low to the ground, with erect spikes of tiny, lilac flowers appearing over…
With ginger hairs, dark banding and a cream tail, the Narcissus bulb fly looks like a bumble bee, but is harmless to us. This mimicry helps to protect it from predators while it searches for…
Honeybees are famous for the honey they produce! These easily recognisable little bees are hard workers, living in large hives made of wax honeycombs.