We talk a lot about how nature is in trouble in the UK, with many species declining. This is true, and it’s a big problem. But there’s still a lot of wonderful wildlife to discover here. So many species, in fact, that it can be easy to overlook some!

We might forget about species because we rarely see them, or because they’re quiet and unobtrusive, or perhaps because we see them so often that we stop thinking about them at all.

30 Days Wild is the perfect time to rediscover some wonderful wildlife!

Grass snake

When it comes to snakes, adders get all the attention. They’re our only venomous snake, which makes them extra exciting. Grass snakes, meanwhile, are just quietly slithering about their business, often unnoticed. Surprising really, as they can grow to over a metre long!

Grass snakes are often found close to wetlands. They’re excellent swimmers and will hunt in the water as well as on land. They’ll eat toads, frogs, fish and newts as well as small mammals and birds. Some animals, including badgers and foxes, will eat grass snakes – but the snakes have a few tricks to put them off. They’ll often play dead if they feel threatened. If that doesn’t work, they can release a foul-smelling substance from their anal gland!

You can sometimes find grass snakes in gardens, especially if they’re left to grow a little wild or have a nice warm compost heap. A pile of rotting vegetation is the perfect place for a female grass snake to lay her eggs.

Treecreeper

Treecreepers aren’t rare birds, there are a few hundred thousand of them across the UK. They can be found in woodlands almost anywhere in the country. But despite that, they aren’t always easy to see.

They’re one of our most unobtrusive birds. They spend most of their day climbing up tree trunks, where their speckled brown back helps them blend in with the bark. They start low on the trunk and spiral upwards, though if they feel like they’re being watched they might hurry to hide on the far side of the trunk. When they reach the top, they flutter down to the bottom of a nearby tree and start to climb again.

You often catch sight of a treecreeper accidentally, spying it on a trunk when you stop to watch another bird. If your ears are sharp, you might hear its high-pitched calls or, in spring, it’s trilling song. Though these sounds are easily overlooked amongst the calls of crests. Outside of the nesting season, treecreepers will often travel around in mixed flocks with tits and other woodland birds.

Ferns

Plants are often overlooked, as they aren’t as active as animals. When we do notice them, it’s usually the ones with large or colourful flowers that grab our attention. But what about the plants with no flowers?

Ferns are ancient. They’ve been thriving without flowers or seeds for millions of years. Instead, they reproduce using spores. The spores develop in tiny structures on the underside of the leaves. They often look like little orange-brown bumps. When the conditions are right, ferns release their spores to drift on the wind and hopefully find somewhere suitable to grow.

Things get a little more complicated after that. When a spore settles, it grows into a tiny heart-shaped plant called a gametophyte, which has both male and female parts. Ferns need water around them so that sperm from the male parts can swim to an egg from a female part. Once an egg has been fertilised, it grows into a young fern plant.

There are lots of different ferns growing in the UK, including hart’s tongue, lady fern and male fern. Many of them like damp, shady places and often grow in woodlands.  The UK’s rare rainforests are wonderful places for ferns!

Solitary bees

Bees are popular insects. But what do you picture when you think of a bee? Is it a fuzzy bumblebee? Or maybe a busy swarm of honey bees? If the answer is yes to either of those, then it’s time to give some love to our solitary bees!

There are around 270 bee species in the UK and the vast majority of them are solitary bees. Unlike bumblebees and honey bees, they don’t live in a nest with other bees. Some dig nest chambers of their own, but others are parasites – known as cuckoo bees. Just like the bird whose name they share, cuckoo bees lay their eggs in someone else’s nest. They kill the host’s own young and eat all of the pollen that was stockpiled for it.

Most solitary bees nest in the ground, burrowing down into the soil. Others nest in old beetle holes in trees, or in plant stems. There are even three species who make their nest in empty snail shells! Once they’ve filled the shell with eggs and pollen, they often hide it beneath twigs and chewed-up leaves.

Have you rediscovered any overlooked wildlife this June? Share it with us on social media using #30DaysWild