Read the passage given below and then answer the questions given below the passage. Some words may be highlighted for your attention.

Cattle egrets – birds once so exotic we rarely saw them north of the Mediterranean – are now nesting in a heronry near my home in Somerset. Flocks of them often gather in the nearby fields, feeding among Jerseys and Holsteins. They look as if they are quite at home on this side of the Channel – which nowadays they are. These small white herons, adorned with their orange breeding-plumes, are just one of several species of waterbirds to have colonised southern Britain in the past decade or so, as a result of the climate crisis. These include the little egret, which has bred here since the mid-90s, and the great white egret, which first nested on the Avalon Marshes less than a decade ago. Egrets are hard to ignore: even people who have little or no interest in birds are beginning to notice these elegant white birds in our midst. But meanwhile, a whole suite of wild creatures is colonising Britain by stealth; sometimes passing under the radar until they have established thriving populations here. During the past decade or so, many species of insect from continental Europe have gained a grip in southern Britain. Other species, which have been here for much longer, are now rapidly extending their ranges northwards – again driven by temperature rise. The latter group includes two species of cricket: Roesel’s bush-cricket and the long-winged conehead cricket. Roesel’s bush-cricket was once a rare and sought-after species, confined to salt marshes in the south and east, but is now spreading north and west into a whole range of new habitats.

Another fascinating insect on the move is the beewolf. This solitary wasp is an ambush killer – the insect equivalent of a leopard. The female lies in wait, then pounces on a passing bee, which she drags down her metre-long nest-hole to feed her hungry young. Many of these insects are flourishing in those marginal, temporary habitats we tend to ignore: what naturalist Richard Mabey dubbed the “unofficial countryside”, or, to give them their official name, brownfield sites.

I’m writing a book about these hidden havens for wildlife, and have spent the last couple of years travelling the country to discover what lives there, including three new damselfly species that have recently arrived in the UK. In a ditch alongside the salt marsh on Essex’s Canvey Island, I watched scarce emerald damselflies, along with a mating pair of a larger and more obvious colonist, the southern migrant (or blue-eyed) hawker. This colourful dragonfly was unknown in the UK until the first decade of the 21st century, when it began to turn up at sites in Kent and Essex. My guide, dragonfly enthusiast Neil Phillips, was one of the first people to find the southern migrant hawker here, and has followed its progress ever since. Near the Thames at East Tilbury, we took a stroll along a public footpath next to a housing estate, where he spotted another recent arrival, the willow emerald. Later, I missed out on the third of this pioneering trio of damselflies, the southern emerald, which was reported from a small pool next to a landfill site near the M40 in Buckinghamshire.

Had a sharp-eyed observer not found the southern emerald here, we would still not have realised that this bright green insect is spreading westwards so rapidly; until recently it had only been recorded in Essex and Kent. Closer to home, on the Somerset Levels, I have recently seen two other dragons and damsels: the small red-eyed damselfly, and the scarce chaser dragonfly, whose females look like a giant, elongated wasp. The small red-eyed damselfly – with eyes like tiny cherry tomatoes – had not even been recorded in the UK until 1999. Yet since then, it has spread at a remarkable rate, and has reached Devon in the west and North Yorkshire in the north.

Butterfly enthusiasts are also looking forward to some exciting new additions in the next few years. The strikingly attractive Queen of Spain fritillary has already bred on at least one occasion in Sussex, and may soon become a permanent addition to our butterfly fauna. Other potential colonists include the continental race of the swallowtail, our largest butterfly, and the smaller long-tailed blue, which, following a major influx in 2013, successfully bred at several sites in southern England. Many new kinds of moths are also crossing the Channel. During the past three decades, no fewer than 30 species have arrived, some managing to colonise. And one of my favourite creatures, the day-flying hummingbird hawk moth, is an increasingly regular sight in southern Britain, as it hovers by flowers to feed on nectar, just like its avian namesake.