There are animals which will now be casting their eyes at British shores to spend the summer months here after avoiding the cold of the English winter in the warmer climes of southern Europe or even Africa.

Even to humans this lifestyle seems attractive but, due to the distances and geography involved is only on offer to creature which have mastered the skills of flight.

Bearing the distances in mind you may think a migration of such magnitude would be limited to masters of flight in the animal world, the birds.

However, there are a couple of insects which have the power to sustain a flight sufficient to span the English channel.

Probably the most notable of these is the red admiral butterfly.

The red admiral gets its name from the fact that sailors in the English channel used to encounter this butterfly perched on their vessels, taking a quick and welcome break in its flight.

Even compared to the red admiral, birds are the masters of these migratory journeys and in Britain we have the world champion of migratory birds covering more distance than any others.

Even a human making regular international business trips would be hard pressed to clock-up more air miles than the arctic tern.

At about this time it will be arriving on the coast of Britain following a flight from islands in the South Antarctic.

In the next couple of weeks, the terns will mate and lay a clutch of eggs.

Most choose to nest in more northern countries and islands such as Iceland and northern Scandinavia.

However, tens of thousand are due to nest in the northern Scottish islands and a few nest in remote areas of Anglesey and the Isle of Man.

There is a slim chance at this time of year of sighting one of these birds in the Wyre Forest area as it flies over en-route to coastal breeding locations.

With their eggs laid the arctic terns rear their brood on a diet of small fish and crustaceans caught at sea.

Once the brood is fledged in October the arctic tern sets off on another mammoth flight leaving these most northern of latitudes to fly the length of the Atlantic Ocean back to the Antarctic.

Another remarkable record held by these birds is that they nest above the Arctic circle and migrate below the Antarctic circle and see fewer hours of darkness than any other animal on earth.