Want to learn more about wildlife near you? You're in the right place, search below and discover the nature you can help protect in Kent.
Considered a gardener’s best friend, hedgehogs will happily hoover up insects roaming in vegetable beds. Famously covered in spines, hedgehogs like to eat all sorts of bugs and crunchy beetles. They are most active at night and hibernate through winter.
The European larch was introduced into the UK from Central Europe in the 17th century. Unusually for a conifer, it is deciduous and displays small, greeny-red cones on brittle twigs.
The sinuous otter is an excellent swimmer and can be seen hunting in wetlands, rivers and along the coast - try the west coast of Scotland, West Wales, the West Country or East Anglia for the best views.
Known for its bandit-like appearance, the polecat was once so persecuted it was on the brink of extinction in the UK. Thankfully, numbers are now increasing in rural Wales and parts of England.
Seabass is a seafood favourite, appearing on menus throughout the UK. But it's in trouble in UK seas, with much of the seabass we eat imported from European fish farms.
The distinctive sight of a spoonbill is becoming increasingly common in the east and southwest of England, with colonies of breeding birds now established.
Eyebright has small, white flowers with purple veins and yellow centres. It likes short grasslands, from clifftops to heaths, and is one of a number of species and hybrids that are hard to tell apart.
The large eyed ladybird is unmistakeable: it is our only ladybird with yellow rings around its black spots. Ladybirds are beneficial insects, managing garden pests - encourage them by putting up a bug box.
A small and delicate plant of chalk grasslands, Fairy flax can be seen in bloom from May to September - look out for its nodding, white flowers.
Although introduced by the Normans, the fallow deer has been here so long that it is considered naturalised. Look out for groups of white-spotted deer in woodland glades.
A fluffy-looking grass of rough grassland, roadside verges and disturbed ground, False oat-grass is very familiar and often overlooked; in fact, it can help to stabilise dunes and shelter small mammals.
Fat hen is a persistent 'weed' of fields and gardens, verges and hedgerows. But, like many of our weed species, it is a good food source for birds and insects.
