RSBP’s Big Garden Bird Watch  

This is a very popular annual event where hundreds of thousands of people spend an hour watching a patch of land, suitable for them, to identify and record the different species of birds that they see. It can be done as an individual, family or part of a group. It can be done in your garden, in a park or just about anywhere that birds can access! It is held at a similar time every year, usually around January and February, so that the RSPB can compare the results with previous years. It's done in the winter because that’s when garden birds need us most. In the colder months it’s likely that more birds will be looking for shelter and food, which makes it easier to count the birds. In 2024, 9.7 million birds were recorded so it just shows how much of a difference it makes when we all come together! 

They provide all the tools you need to learn how to identify and record the birds in your area, so why not try it next time? 

Butterfly Conservation Big Butterfly Count 

For this annual UK wide survey (usually around July – August) you need to spend just 15 minutes in a sunny spot watching and identifying butterflies, using a downloadable chart provided by the Butterfly Conservation. You then log your findings on their app.  

Butterflies are a vital part of our precious ecosystem, being part of the food chain for many animals and important pollinators. This survey is more important than ever as their numbers are in rapid decline, which is an indicator that other wildlife is suffering too. 

Bloomin’ Algae

Bloomin’ Algae is a Citizen Science app for reporting the presence of harmful algal blooms of blue-green algae. The app helps speed up public health warnings and can help teach you how to recognise the risks to you, children and animals. 

By sending in your records of blue-green algae, you can help provide a rapid and more comprehensive picture of harmful algal blooms in your area. This will help inform the relevant environment agency, local authority or landowner of potential public health risks in your area so that, if needed, they can provide early warning to the public. As well as recording the location and date of the bloom, you need to submit a photo of the bloom to help us verify your record. Optionally, you can add what activities take place at the lake e.g. swimming or dog walking, to gauge the potential health risks to people or animals. 

They aim to provide rapid feedback on your record, within one or two days, to inform you of the health risks and to help you learn how to identify blue-green algae with more confidence. 

Nature Overheard 

Insects are important for a healthy environment, but noise can make it hard for them to communicate with each other. They may have to change their sounds to be heard in noisy places.

Join us on the Nature Overheard survey, collecting data to better understand how road noise affect insects. Or take part in other activities to support this research while you build your own scientific skills and knowledge. 

Bugs Matter

Use the digital splatometer to count the squashed bugs on your number plate before and after a journey! The methodology is based on the ‘windscreen phenomenon’, a term given to the observation that people tend to find fewer insects squashed on the windscreens of their cars compared to several decades ago. 

Bug Life want to repeat this survey every year to build up a better understanding of insect populations. The survey uses an innovative insect sampling method conducted by members of the public to assess the difference in insect abundance over a number of years. Insects are also a good indicator for measuring the success of our conservation work at landscape-scale. 

The Great UK WaterBlitz

This is a biannual campaign calling on everyone to go out and test the quality of their local freshwater including rivers, streams and lakes.  

This helps to build a national picture of water quality across the UK. The Great UK WaterBlitz is part of our ongoing FreshWater Watch citizen science monitoring programme. 

Our rivers and freshwater habitats are at crisis point and we need urgent action. 

Register your interest using the above link, to join the next WaterBlitz taking place 25-28 April 2025. 

The Big River Watch 

The Rivers Trust is asking nature lovers to join The Big River Watch, a citizen science survey that will help to inform people and communities about the health of rivers in the Midlands and beyond.  

Between 25th April to 1st May 2025, they’re asking people to contribute to rivers’ recovery by recording observations of local rivers on a brand new, free-to-use app.  

The results will contribute to a comprehensive data set on river health covering the whole of the UK and Ireland.  

Nature’s Calendar

Help the Woodland Trust to keep track of the weather to see its effect on the climate. From leaf buds bursting to blackberries ripening, let them know what’s happening near you! You'll be contributing to a long biological record that dates back as far as 1736! 

Hedgehog Street 

Ensuring hedgehogs can pass freely through your garden is one of the most important things you can do to help them, so why not work with your neighbours to create a hedgehog highway then record it on this map?

Hedgehogs travel around one mile every night through our parks and gardens in their quest to find enough food and a mate. If you have an enclosed garden you might be getting in the way of their plans. One of the main reasons hedgehogs are struggling in Britain is because our fences and walls are becoming more and more secure, reducing the amount of land available to them. 

We can make their life a little easier by removing the barriers within our control – for example, by making holes in or under our garden fences and walls for them to pass through. 

Mammal Web

Prefer or need to stay indoors? Mammal Web has the opportunity for you to act as a “spotter” from your laptop, where you’ll help identify animals in the images taken by camera traps. Or, you could even to volunteer as a "Trapper", by setting up their own camera trap and uploading the pictures from it! 

More knowledge about the distribution and abundance of wild mammals, and the factors affecting them, is useful for lots of reasons. These range from gaining a better understanding of the ecology of these species and their responses to current environmental changes, to planning the development of infrastructure and managing wildlife disease. Taking photos of wild animals helps us to understand what is going on. 

iRecord

The goal of iRecord is to make it easier for wildlife sightings to be collated, checked by experts and made available to support research and decision-making at local and national levels. Join iRecord to share your sightings with the recording community, explore dynamic maps and graphs of your data and make a real contribution to science and conservation. 

Seek by iNaturalist 

Take your nature knowledge up a notch with Seek! Use the power of image recognition technology to identify the plants and animals all around you. Earn badges for seeing different types of birds, amphibians, plants, and fungi and participate in monthly observation challenges.