Wildlife Surveys

BTO Garden Bird Watch

BTO has run the year-round Garden BirdWatch scheme since 1995, and thousands of people across the UK contribute their sightings each week.

Gardens are really important habitats for wildlife, but we need to understand how and why populations of garden birds and other wildlife are changing, and how we can help them.

The more we can understand about how birds and animals use our gardens, the more we can improve our cities, towns, villages and individual gardens for wildlife.

Become more connected to nature, learn about your garden wildlife and contribute to important scientific research by getting involved with our community of Garden BirdWatchers.

Garden BirdWatch volunteers can view and enter data in the online portal.

Bumblebee surveying and monitoring - Bumblebee Conservation Trust

There are currently three different ways that you can help us gather data and track the UK’s bumblebees.

BeeWalk

This is the national recording scheme which monitors the abundance of bumblebees across Britain (Ireland and Northern Ireland run an equivalent scheme). The scheme relies on over 800 volunteers, just like you, who identify and count the bumblebees that they see on a fixed walking route of around 1 to 2km. Each BeeWalk route is walked at least once a month from March to October.

Anyone with basic bumblebee identification knowledge, or the desire to gain these skills through our training sessions or resources, can become a BeeWalker. After you have decided where your route will be and registered it with us, each monthly walk only takes about an hour or two followed by another 20 minutes or less to submit your sightings to the BeeWalk website.

UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (PoMS)

This monitoring scheme focuses on a range of flower-visiting insects and can measure trends in wider pollinator populations across the UK. Data from BeeWalk is feeding into this scheme, but anyone can contribute directly to the scheme, either by carrying out short Flower-Insect Timed Counts (watch a patch of flowers for 10 minutes and see what turns up) or by monitoring a 1km square.

iRecord

To record bumblebees and other wildlife on a more casual basis, go to the iRecord website. If you have one, include a photo of the bumblebee that you have seen to allow the iRecord experts to verify your sighting.