Learning About Pollinator Identification (FOR FREE!)

March has been a cold and miserable month, making getting out into the garden and doing anything for pollinators quite tricky. But I thought I would take advantage of this time inside to get my pollinator identification knowledge up to speed, ready for when they return with the warmer weather.

Did you know there is a plethora of free resources and information on pollinator identification readily available online? I found loads of free, cool stuff, but it is a bitspread out all over the place, and it depends on which pollinators you want to focus on. Below is a little summary of the best websites and resources that I thought were really useful:

Overviews of Pollinators

This Introduction to Pollinator Identification video from Buglife is a great gateway into starting your pollinator education. They also have a website with more pollinator facts.

If you're interested in which pollinators you may see in Kent, then the Species Explorer on the Kent Wildlife Trust website is worth looking through. On the invertebrates page they have the list of insect groups, including those below, which lead to lists of species you may see in Kent.

For seasonal pollinators, the Countryfile website had a great spring and summer article for which pollinators you are likely to see during these seasons.

Bees

Bees can be broadly separated into a few groups: honey bees, bumblebees and solitary bees. The British Beekeepers Association have a great article on how to tell the groups apart, as does the Countryfile website.

For bumblebee identification, there are lots of great guides from organisations such as the Wildlife Trust and of course the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. BBCT also have many free online courses you can attend for more information on bumblebee ecology and identification, you can book onto these through their events calendar. I attended the Entry-level identification training at the beginning of the month and it was so good I signed up to the intermediate training!

There are a few good resources for solitary bees, a blog and pdf from the Wildlife Trust and a guide to the Solitary bees of the UK from BEESPOKE.

For more information on all Hymenoptera (this includes bees, wasps and ants) visit the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society website.

Butterflies

The obvious place to learn more about butterflies are Butterfly Conservation and UK Butterflies websites. I particularly enjoyed the larval and pupa section on UK Butterflies where you can see the caterpillar and pupa stages of each species.

The Wildlife Trust, Woodland Trust and Countryfile websites all have great articles on identifying common butterfly species.

If you prefer learning through videos and YouTube, Eco Sapien have a great selection of videos on butterflies.

Moths

Moths are such a huge group that it is very hard to find a dedicated identification article or resource, so instead, here are a few websites that broadly cover moths and how to identify what you are seeing should you go out moth trapping.

For all things moths in Kent, the first place to check out is the Kent Moths website. This has lots of information on all the moths that have been recorded in Kent.

At a more national scale, Butterfly Conservation, UK Moths and Wildlife Trust websites all have lots of information on moths and identifying what you have found.

If you want to know what you are likely to see if you go out moth trapping this evening, then the What's Flying Tonight web app is brilliant! It uses your location and the date to show you what is most likely to be on the wing that night.

Flies

For a broad overview of flies, then these Natural History Museum and UK Safari webpages are really handy.

There is a lot more information on hoverflies though as a family within the fly group. Discover Wildlife have an easy to read article on some of the common hoverflies you'll find, whereas the British Naturalists' Association has a larger list of hoverfly species. There is a downloadable guide from BCN Wildlife Trust on Garden Hoverflies, and a video by The Royal Parks if you've had enough of reading.

Wasps

Apart from the BWAS website,there are only a few articles on identifying wasps, and usually they are the social wasps, not the solitary ones. The Countryfile website has a great article that covers the wasps life cycle as well as identifying some common species. BCN Wildlife Trust also have a similar article, but with useful drawings of the wasps' faces, which are great ways of determining which species you have.

Beetles

Very little is known about beetles as pollinators compared to many of the other groups above, somany of the resources I found looked at beetles in general rather than as pollinators.

UK Beetles website has one of the most comprehensive lists of beetle species you will find in the UK. Other websites that had smaller list of species of more commonly seen species, including the Countryfile, Natural History Museum, Woodland Trust, and Gardeners' World websites.