Surveys

Outside your window, there are some ferocious predators: from insects to insectivores, and caterpillars to cats, fierce carnivores prowl around every corner. A lot of wild mammals, although not strictly carnivores, will eat other animals occasionally. But one group is known for it: the Carnivora, which includes the cat-, dog- and weasel families. They are …

Charity asks for help recording wildlife in gardens, parks and other urban green spaces Volunteers across the UK are being asked to become ‘wildlife detectives’ this spring by searching their gardens, parks and other urban green spaces for wild mammals and recording their findings online. Conservationists at leading wildife charity People’s Trust for Endangered Species …

Road casualties tell us something about the living You might think a field guide to identifying ‘roadkill’ was unnecessarily macabre, but as Roger Knutson explains in his 1987 book, Flattened Fauna, ‘in becoming part of the road fauna … an animal loses not only its life but also … most of its mass and much …

Charity asks for help recording endangered wildlife in gardens, parks and on local riverbanks Volunteers across the UK are being asked to search their gardens, local green spaces or riverbanks this spring in a bid to help endangered wildlife, as part of a leading wildlife charity’s annual spring surveys. Starting in March, wildlife conservation charity …

‘A common pipistrelle can eat over 3,000 tiny insects in a single night.’ It’s a stat that gets repeated a lot. It’s a common sight on summer evenings, a little after sunset, to see pipistrelles feeding overhead on small flies, midges and mosquitos. Pipistrelles are aerial hawkers, catching and eating their prey on the wing, …

The National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme (NHMP) is an exciting new project aiming to calculate robust population estimates for hedgehogs. The project officially launched at the end of March 2024 and the pilot phase is currently running for three years, until May 2026. We started our first surveys last year (2023) and are looking forward to …

The first mammals made an appearance around the start of the dinosaurs’ heyday, 200 million years ago. Then (as now), most dinosaurs were diurnal (active during the day) and keeping out from under their feet was probably a smart move. So, mammals adopted an alternative lifestyle, busying themselves at night. Goats town For a lot …

Help is needed across the country to protect Britain’s fastest declining mammal, before it’s too late Wildlife conservation charity People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) is calling for volunteers in all corners of England, Scotland and Wales to survey endangered water voles, whose populations have plummeted by a staggering 90% since the 1970s. Despite being …

A pioneering new three-year pilot project – the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme (NHMP) – has been launched. For the first time, this will enable robust estimates of hedgehog populations in different habitats across the country, show how these are changing year on year, and, in time, give a national estimate of Britain’s hedgehog population. The …

This spring, leading wildlife conservation charity People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) is calling for volunteers across the UK to take part in its popular annual Living with Mammals survey, in a bid to track changes in our wildlife. ­Volunteers are needed to record sightings of any wild mammals they see each week in their …

Charity calls for help recording endangered wildlife in gardens and on local riverbanks This spring, leading wildlife conservation charity People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) is calling for volunteers across the UK to take part in their annual spring surveys in a bid to help endangered wildlife and the habitats they call home. From March …

Veronica and John‘s medium-sized suburban garden is about two miles outside a city in the north of England. ‘We read a lot about the importance of gardens as potential spaces for wildlife to flourish, so we decided to join the Living with Mammals survey. That was in 2006, and we’ve been going ever since.’ Fifteen-year-old …