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Female Grey Seals mature at 4-7 years old and can live to 46, and, since the pregnancy rate is high, perhaps 80-90%, they can give birth to a fair few pups. They haul ashore to give birth normally on rocky coasts but around the British Isles they sometimes make use of sandy shores and tidal flats.

The Harvest Mouse is the only old world mammal to have a truly prehensile tail and is one of the smallest rodents - a fully grown male weighs in at about 7g (or ¼oz in old money). To achieve this gargantuan size they climb grass and flower stalks to eat seeds and small insects.

Lapwing chicks are looked after by both parents with the male usually guarding whilst the female does most of the leading and brooding. Four to five weeks after leaving the nest they are left to their own devices.

From great abundance as city scavengers when Shakespeare was scribbling, through years of persecution to a low point of perhaps only 10 pairs scraping a living in central Wales, Red Kites are on the up again. Re-introduction programmes from captive-bred birds have been successful in the Chilterns, the Midlands and north-east England and a few sites throughout Scotland.

Only some 160,000 Red Squirrels are left in Britain, compared with more than 2.5 million Greys. They are more arboreal than the Grey, being extremely agile traveling along branches, but they do come to the ground to forage and bury food.