Become a Citizen Scientist for Nature!

I believe that citizen science is incredibly important, not just in gathering data to help in the work of conservation schemes, but in reconnecting everyday people with nature and giving them the chance to learn about the wildlife on their doorstep. Once you start to look for it you will begin to see nature thriving all around you, learning and caring for it benefits not just the wildlife but you as well. Here I have collected together as many different environmental/conservation projects as I could find. Most of the projects on the list are UK wide, some are specific to Scotland. I hope to keep the list updated into the future and possibly expand to include projects specific to other areas of the UK. I hope you find a project that interests you! <3

Many of the projects below use iRecord to collect survey results and reports of sightings. The huge database of wildlife information collected by iRecord is used in research papers as well as local and national decision making. After creating an account you will be able to find a lot of projects you can contribute to!
To report a sighting of an Invasive Non-Native Species (plant or animal) use the app or website INNS Mapper. I am hoping to add a page to my website about invasive species in the near future.

Navigate to a section:
Birds
Insects
Mammals
Amphibians and Reptiles
Plants
Coastal

Birds

RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch
Type: Survey
Location: UK wide
Season/duration: 1 weekend in January every year
Time needed: 1 hour
Experience needed: none, although ideal if you can identify common garden birds, guides available to download
Description: Spend just 1 hour watching and counting the birds that visit your garden or a local green space!

The British Trust for Ornithology always have many projects you can get involved with depending on your experience and location, including monitoring breeding birds, geese and swans, nesting birds, and heronries. The ones I have included below are ideal for beginners but check out the BTO website for the full list!
BTO's Weekly Garden Birdwatch
Type: Survey
Location:Uk wide
Season/duration: all year
Time needed: minimum of 20 minutes a week
Experience needed: can identify common garden birds
Description: Just like the Big Garden Birdwatch but week every week. Get to know the birds in your garden!

BTO's Blackbirds in Gardens Survey
Type: Survey
Location:Uk wide
Season/duration: summer 2025
Time needed: minimum of 15 minutes a week
Experience needed: can identify male, female and juvenile blackbirds
Description: Help the BTO to monitor the wellbeing of the UK's blackbirds and the impact the mosquito-borne Usutu virus is having on them. This survey is part of the Vector-Borne RADAR project.

Another great way to help bird research worldwide is to use the app eBird to record any of your bird sightings. Another great app also by Cornell lab is Merlin. The app uses sound ID to suggest what birds you are hearing and is a great way to become more familiar with bird calls.

Insects

The Big Butterfly Count
Type: Survey
Location: UK wide
Season/duration: 18th July - 10th August 2025
Time needed: 15 minutes
Experience needed: none, butterfly guides available to download
Description: Spend 15 minutes in your garden or any green space and record the butterflies you see (even no butterflies is useful data!). You can submit as many counts as you like for the duration of the survey.

Pollinator Monitoring Scheme
Type: Survey
Location: UK wide
Season/duration: 1st April - 30th September
Time needed: 10mins
Experience needed: none, only basic insect ID needed
Description: To do a Flower-Insect Timed count or FIT count, simply choose a flower (ideally one of the chosen 14 target flowers, which includes dandelions, buttercups, white clover and lavender), watch your flower for 10 minutes and count how many insects visit it within that time. You only need to record the species group of the insects you see not the exact species, so simply noting "bee" or "butterfly" is fine. The most helpful surveys are ones where multiple flowers in the same area are surveyed or ones where multiple surveys are conducted in the same location (as precise as possible) throughout the 6 months the project runs. You can upload your survey results on the FIT count app or through the form on the website. Four 1km square surveys are also conducted each year, one in May, June, July and August. If you are interested check the map on the website for unadopted squares. Note that for these surveys you should be comfortable using pan traps.

Garden Butterfly Survey
Type: Survey
Location: UK wide
Season/duration: all year
Time needed: no time restrictions
Experience needed: none, ID guides available
Description: Register your garden for the count and record the butterflies that visit your garden. The survey wants to record what butterflies visit your garden throughout the year, not just summer, be ready to log butterflies regularly.

BeeWalk
Type: Survey
Location: Scotland, Wales and England
Season/duration: all year, surveys monthly
Time needed: a few hours a month
Experience needed: confidently identify types of bees (guides and chances to learn on the website)
Description: Choose a 1-2km route and walk it once a month, record what types of bees you see. The information collected is important for monitoring how bees are adapting to climate change and changing land use.
Survey equivalent in Ireland and Northern Ireland here!

Mosquito Scotland
Type: Record a sighting
Location: Scotland
Description: Most people think we only have midges in Scotland but we have mosquitos too! Mosquitos in Scotland are very under researched, but you can help monitor them. If you spot a mosquito try to get a photo and note down as precise a location as possible.

National Moth Recording Scheme
Type: record sightings/conduct your own survey
Location: UK wide
Season/duration: all year
Time needed: no time restrictions
Experience needed: can identify types of moths, ID guides
Description: Wether you are recording a singular sighting or setting up your own (butterfly conservation approved) moth trap and recording what you find, every bit of data collected is important. The scheme uses iRecord to colect your findings, or you can report them to your county moth recorder.

Asian Hornet Watch
Type: Record a sighting
Location: UK wide
Description: On this website you can learn how to identify the invasive Yellow-Legged Asian Hornet. If you spot one or a nest of them, report it using the app or online form.

Mammals

Big Hedgehog Map
Type: Record a sighting
Location: UK wide
Description: Help look after our hedgehogs by recording any sightings here, dead or roadkill hedgehogs are important data. Make sure you note the location of your sighting. The website also includes information on how to encourage hedgehogs to your garden and neighborhood.

Saving Scotland's Red Squirrels
Type: Record a sighting
Location: Scotland
Description: Record squirrel sightings (red or invasive grey) to help in red squirrel conservation efforts. When you see a squirrel, note down the location, habitat and any other information that might be useful and you want to include in your submission.

The National Bat Monitoring Programme run by the Bat Conservation Trust has different surveys for different levels of experience check out the full range at their website. If you're lucky enough to have a roost at or near your house the roost count is perfect for you! Otherwise the survey below is perfect for begginer bat watchers.
NBMP Sunset Survey
Type: Survey
Location: UK wide
Season/duration: every year from April - October
Time needed: 1 hour at sunset/dusk (or sunrise/dawn to catch a dawn swarming!)
Experience needed: none! BCT provide guides, advice and even online workshops to get you started
Description: Spend 1 hour at dusk in your garden or local green space looking for bats, you'll be surprised at where you can find them! You can also record any other nightlife you spot such as foxes or badgers in your survey. You can submit as many times as you like for the duration of the survey. Using a bat detector is optional and if you have experience with one check out the other surveys available!

Mountain Hare Volunteer Survey
Type: Sightings or surveys
Location: Scottish Uplands
Season/duration: all year
Time needed: project dependant Experience needed: can identify mountain hares, distinguish them from brown hares or rabbits
Description: To help monitor mountain hares you can record a sightings on the Mammal Mapper app, take part in rambling surveys or sign up for a 1km square survey with BTO. The website includes helpful ID tips and even how to ID mountain hare dung!

Saving Scottish Wildcats
Type: Record a sighting
Location: Scotland
Description: If you are incredibly lucky and come across a Scottish wildcat that information is very important to the organisation Saving Wildcats who monitor them. You can learn how to identify wildcats (and tell them apart from tabby cats) on their website. Photos of the cat are really useful as it means experts can verify your sighting as being either a wildcat, hybrid or feral tabby.

Amphibians and Reptiles

Amphibian and Reptile Group's Record Pool
Type: Sightings and Surveys
Location: UK wide with projects covering specific areas
Season/duration: all year (sightings)
Time needed: project dependant
Experience needed: project dependant
Description: Record sightings of frogs, toads, newts, slow worms, lizards and snakes by uploading a photo, time, location and other relevant information. Check out what projects ARG are running in your area.

Grass Snakes in Scotland
Type: Record a sighting
Location: Scotland
Description: Until 2010 it was believed there were no grass snakes in Scotland, after three confirmed sightings and more unconfirmed sightings ARG UK and other conservation organisations decided more research needs to be done on grass snakes in Scotland. If you spot one try to take some photos and note down the species, time of sighting, the location (as precise as you can) the habitat you find it in and the distance from livestock and distance from nearest village/town/city.

Toads on Roads
Type: join a volunteer group
Location: toad migration sites across the UK
Season/duration: beginning any time between late January to late March depending on location, lasts as long as there are toads crossing your migration site
Time needed: evenings/nights during toad migration season
Experience needed: patrollers from your group will be able to show you the ropes, and lots of info on the froglife website
Description: help toads cross the road! Common toads return to the same ancestral breeding ponds every year, this sometimes means they have to cross roads that have been built on their path. Froglife has a map of toad migration sites across the UK and wether there is an active group at that site, maybe there's a site no is looking after and you can start a new toad patrol!

Plants

BSBI New Year Plant Hunt
Type: Survey
Location: Uk wide and Ireland
Season/duration: 4 days over the end of December and beginnging of January
Time needed: no time restrictions
Experience needed: none, BSBI have guides to help you identify many common plants
Description: Spend some time in nature over the new year period, go on a walk and identify as many plants as you can. There are always lots of group hunts listed on the BSBI site.

Urban Flora of Scotland Project
Type: Survey
Location: Scotland, towns or cities with a population of more than 1000
Time needed: no time restrictions
Experience needed: plant identification, guides and keys available on the BSS website
Description: The Botanical Society of Scotland want your help in documenting plants in urban spaces using iRecord. Urban flora is essential to understanding a lot of things, our history, current air quality and as cities are warmer than countryside urban flora is useful in researching the effects of climate change on plantlife. When documenting plants, use the broadest sense of the word, include not just flowers or trees but mosses, lichens, fungi and algae too.

National Plant Monitoring Scheme
Type: Survey
Location: UK wide
Experience needed: ideal if can identify "indicator species", although there are opportunities to learn or be mentored
Description: To take part you must be assigned a random 1km square in your area by the NPMS, after that you will be given more information.

Plant Alert
Type: Survey
Location: gardens across the UK
Experience needed: be able to monitor the plants in your garden
Description: Plant alert is a project that hopes to predict what ornamental garden plants could be a future problem for UK plant and wildlife. They want you to document any ornamental plants in your garden that are spreading to the point of overgrowing other plants or parts of your garden you do not want them, as well as any invasive non-native species in your garden (such as Japanese Knotweed, Rhododendron and Himalayan Balsam).

Woodland Trust's Ancient Tree Inventory
Type: Record a sighting
Location: UK wide
Experience needed: tree species identification
Description: Old trees are incredibly important and need better protection, help Woodland Trust to protect ancient trees. If you know of or find an old tree, take lots of photos and record the tree's species, location, girth of the trunk and wether the tree is on public or private land.

Bloomin' Algae
Type: Record a sighting
Location: UK and Ireland, Norway, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Belgium
Description: Using the Bloomin' Algae app you can record sightings of the harmful blue-green algae. There are guides to diffrentiating between duckweed and filamentous algae (both harmless) and blue-green algae. Be careful that you don't come into contact with the algae as it produces toxic chemicals harmful to both wildlife and humans.

Coastal

Big Seaweed Search
Type: Survey
Location: UK wide
Season/duration: year round
Time needed: 1 hour
Experience needed: none
Description: Help monitor seaweed and how it is adapting to a changing climate through lists and photos

The Great Eggcase Hunt
Type: Survey
Location: global
Season/duration: all year
Time needed: no time restrictions
Experience needed: none
Description: Eggcases (sometimes called "mermaids purses") washed onto our shores are a useful way for scientists to monitor the shark and rays in our waters. Take some time to look for eggcases (most often found in seaweed along the strandline), or if you happen to come across an eggcase by chance, take a photo and record your findings on the Shark Trust website. Be careful to make sure the eggcase is empty, if you find a live embryo put the eggcase back in the sea or a deep rockpool (more info on what to do on the Shark Trust website).

The Great Nurdle Hunt
Type: Survey
Location: global
Season/duration: all year with a specific awareness event in October
Time needed: no time restrictions (time spent should be recorded)
Experience needed: none
Description: You have probably come across nurdles before, small plastic pellets about the size of a lentil, melted down to make nearly all plastic products. Spilt nurdles litter beaches and coastlines worldwide and are a huge problem for wildlife. By collecting nurdles and submitting your findings to the great nurdle hunt you can help to document and tackle the issue. Wear gloves and make sure you know what to do with the nurdles you collect, they cannot be recycled and must be binned securely to make sure they don't end up back in the ocean.

If you have a project to add to my list or you want to chat more about citizen science you can email me here!
For even more citizen science you can have a look at Natural History Museum, the Marine Conservation Society, and the People's Trust for Endangered Species (I orginally planned to include their dormouse survey however I do not want to motivate people to disturb the dormice unless they have a license to do so, incidental sightings should absolutely be recorded though).
For anyone in or around Tayside check out Tayside Biodiversity and their projects.
For information on encoraging more wildlife to your garden I recommend The Wildlife Trusts website.