Street Safari

Turn your walk to school into a street safari and see how many animals, plants, or fungi you can spot.

This October, to celebrate International Walk to School month, we are collaborating with Living Streets, the UK charity for everyday walking, and inviting families to snap photos of wildlife they see on the way to and from school.

Don’t walk to school? Don’t worry, you can take part on your walk to work or even the shops.

There will also be a competition to see which individual and which school have made the most observations.

Street Safari is part of our Nature Overheard project.

How to take part

For Street Safari we’re inviting you to take a few minutes on your walk to school or work to look for wildlife.

Once you’ve spotted something, make an observation by taking a photograph on your phone and upload it using the free iNaturalist app. Take note of anything you see on roadsides - whether it’s an animal, plant, or fungus - see it, snap it, record it!

Each week we will have a theme to inspire you but any wildlife counts. Why not set yourself a challenge to see how many different species you can spot in 31 days?

Sign up to the Street Safari newsletter to enter the competition and hear news about the project.

Download iNaturalist and register for the project

1. 📲 Download app

 You can download the free iNaturalist app onto your smartphone, either from the Google Play store for Android phones or the Apple App store for iPhones.
If you’d rather use your camera and a browser, then you can sign up on the iNaturalistUK website, then upload your photos later.

2. 🖊️ Register for the project

Create an iNaturalist account and join the Street Safari project. 
Please note: you must join the project for us to be able to see your findings and for you to be able to see other people’s entries.

Make observations and record your sightings

1. 👀See it

Find any wildlife near roads between 1-31 Oct 2023.

2. 📸Snap it

Take a picture of what you've found. To make identification easier, get a few photos at different angles if possible.

3. 📝 Record it

Record what you find by uploading a picture onto the iNaturalist app or at iNaturalistUK.

4. 🌐 Log your location

Please note: it's important that you log the location of where you saw the animal, plant or fungus.

If you take the photo through the iNaturalist app, please ensure that your phone location information is turned on.

If you upload a picture later onto the app from your phone's photo gallery, or upload via a web browser, then you may have to add the location manually.

Sign up for competition entry and project updates

Sign up to the Street Safari newsletter to enter the competition and hear news about the project.

To enter the competition, you need to have signed up to the iNaturalist project, as we need your iNaturalist account name to track your entries and see if you are a winner!

If you would like your school to be eligible, then please pop in their name and address.

Please note: Email details must be from people over 13 years of age. So, if younger, please get a parent or guardian to fill in this section.

Competition rules

• There will be two overall winners, one individual winner and one school winner.
• The individual winner will be the person who has submitted the most observations to the Street Safari project on iNaturalist. The school winner will be the school with the highest number of nominations by participants who have contributed to the Naturalist project and signed up the competition entry form.
• The prize for the individual winner will be a £25 book voucher and the school prize will be a £75 book voucher.

You can download the full competition terms and conditions (PDF 182KB).

What will happen to my data?

Observations added to iNaturalistUK may be shared to the National Biodiversity Network Trust’s NBN Atlas, which amalgamates and shares biodiversity data for the whole of the UK.

Any iNaturalistUK observations that reach research grade will be shared with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). This enables them to be analysed and researched widely, to better understand the UK's rich biodiversity.