What has been recorded near me
The NBN Atlas's explore-your-area page lists species recorded near any UK postcode or place.
Explore your area →Tools for questions about UK wildlife
Other organisations run good free tools for questions about UK wildlife. These are the ones we'd start with.
Where to look up protected sitesSix questions, six tools
Six questions people ask most often about local wildlife, each answered by a tool run by the organisation that holds the data.
What protects this place
MAGIC, Defra's map of designated sites and environmental data, shows what protects a place in England.
Open MAGIC →Is this species protected
The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and its schedules, published in full on legislation.gov.uk, set out which species are protected and how.
Read the schedules →What is happening this season
Nature's Calendar, run by the Woodland Trust, records what is happening in nature across the UK this season.
See this season →Is the water clean here
The Environment Agency publishes bathing water quality for England's designated bathing waters.
Check water quality →What bird is that
BirdNET, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, identifies a bird from a sound recording. It can get the identification wrong.
Try BirdNET →The rest, tool by tool
A few questions come up often enough to list on their own, each answered by a tool run by the body responsible for that data.
Protected areas and site condition
- Protected areas in Scotland: NatureScot's SiteLink (sitelink.nature.scot) is the map and register of Scotland's protected sites.
- Protected areas in Wales: DataMapWales (datamap.gov.wales), the Welsh Government's map portal, shows protected sites across Wales.
- How a designated site in England is faring: Natural England's Designated Sites View (designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk) lists England's designated sites along with their condition assessments.
Licences and water quality
- Wildlife licences: gov.uk (gov.uk/guidance/wildlife-licences) explains the licences available for wildlife work in England and how to apply for one from Natural England.
- Sewage overflows: the Rivers Trust's sewage map (theriverstrust.org/sewage-map) shows where sewage overflows have discharged into rivers and seas.
Identification
- A bird by sight: the RSPB's bird identifier (rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/identify-a-bird) works through a bird's features to narrow down the species.
- Any species from a photograph: iNaturalist (inaturalist.org) matches a photo against its records, with a community of recorders checking the suggested answer. Like any identification tool, it can get it wrong, particularly on a poor photo or a difficult group.
- Guides and keys for working it out by hand: the Field Studies Council (field-studies-council.org) publishes identification guides and keys covering UK wildlife.
Trends in how species are doing
- Birds: BirdTrends, from the British Trust for Ornithology (bto.org/our-work/science/publications/reports/birdtrends), reports on how each UK bird species is faring.
- Butterflies: the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (ukbms.org), run by Butterfly Conservation with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the British Trust for Ornithology and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, publishes butterfly trends drawn from its transect counts.
- England's species-abundance target: Defra's indicators of species abundance in England (gov.uk/government/statistics/indicators-of-species-abundance-in-england) is the statutory measure against which that target is tracked.
The record behind most of it
Underneath a lot of the above sits one shared record: the NBN Atlas (nbnatlas.org), the National Biodiversity Network's public record of UK wildlife sightings. Several of the tools listed here, and elsewhere on this page, draw on it directly.
You can also look up protected sites or browse by species group.
Pick the question you need answered
Each tool answers one question, run by the organisation that holds the data behind it.