UKH

Hi all, hoping to delve into the UKC/H hivemind.

Many a time we are outdoors and go "what's that tree/plant/mushroom/bird" and the answer is always "if friend A/sister B was here they'd know". But they have better things than to be our 24/7 guide.

So, any recommendations for good guides to UK flora and fauna? Ideally I'm after a book as I like something tangible, but an app may also be useful when out and about.

thanks in advance for any help!

I got my other half a Wild Foods foraging course a few years ago, spent the day being taken around the grounds of Glamis castle given really good tips on what to look for, and collecting our finds. The guide then cooked it all up for us at the end along with some elderflower champagne, delicious. We really enjoyed the course and it gave us the confidence to forage a few easily recognisable mushrooms.

Anyway, to answer your question, the guide was plugging his foraging book, which we subsequently bought and really like. Used it loads this year. The good thing about it is that it shows mushrooms (and various plants) at different stages in their lifecycle as they can look very different.

Here's a link to the book

https://www.wildfooduk.com/shop/the-wild-food-uk-foraging-pocket-guide/

Happy foraging!

ooh, that looks good - I've got a couple of the River cottage guides (hedgrerow, mushrooms, seashore).

Hedgreow is good, but i'm still a mushroom coward, seashore a bit disapointing.

Nic - are you after more of a nature book though? I think its quite hard to have a compact volume that does everything - so maybe you need something chunky for home use? that might be best served by several books (flowers/insects/birds/mammals) rather than just one?

I've got the river cottage seashore book too. Thought it was nice enough for a flick through but wasn't really inspired to do much coastal foraging.

I'm definitely not brave when it comes to mushrooms. So far I've just eaten chanterelles, cep (aka penny bun) and cauliflower fungus (looks a bit like a brain in couldn't be mistaken for anything else!). There's been a few others I've been fairly sure I knew what they were, but not enough to risk it.

For a freebie app:  Seek by iNaturalist.  Great for plants etc.  And it can send a geo pin thingy to the host for when you find something more unusual, to help map spread of plants etc, people science which is a good thing.

Dax is right, you'll need a collection.  Collins BTO guide for birds is good.  You would soon outgrow a beginners one, but the basic RSPB would do that job.

The Foragers Calendar by John Wright is good.

Yes - several books would make more sense - excellent knowledge in each, rather than jack of all trades master of none.

Cheers for the app suggestion - always keen on citizen science apps, maybe that's another thread for another day (the last one I used for a bit was 'splatter' to log roadkill which can be deemed an 'interesting' hobby. I suppose the Zoe covid app was also citizen science, but not put it on my new phone yet)

Birdnet is handy as well. Tries to recognise bird song for when the bleeping things are teasing you by hiding in the trees.

British trees by the woodland trust is good for its title subject.

Both have limitations but definitely easier than deciding which book to cart around on a particular day (or ending up going for a day walk with a rucksack weighing as much as one for an unsupported week long walk).

Plants and habitats by Ben Avaris is a cracking beginners guide, some context in their about Ecology, man's management and so on. Very user friendly 

They're a bit big for you pocket but I love the Collins Guide to xxx series, the Insects book is my favourite book of all time.

I have several of the Princeton WILDGuides and have found them consistently excellent.

https://www.nhbs.com/publisher/wildguides

For wildflowers, I have The Wildflower Key, which I found quite technical and tricky to use. I ended up supplementing it with Harrap's Wildflowers, which is really easy to use and which I'm really satisfied with. It's the latter I always go to now.

For insects, I have "A Comprehensive Guide to Insects of Britain and Ireland" by Paul D. Brock, which is great - but Princeton just recently published an insect book in the above WILDGuide series by him, so that might be thought of as superseding his previous book.

Yes, I think the Collins Field Guides are pretty good for the interested non-specialist.  Detailed enough to identify most things you're likely to see (or at least something obviously closely related) I have half a shelf of them covering invertebrates, pond life, snails, spiders. birds, reptiles, trees, ferns, fungi, wild flowers etc, UK and Europe.

If you really want a thing of beauty and authority on fungi, then it has to be something by Roger Phillips.  

I agree! The wild guides British birds is fantastic.

Website Xeno- canto is excellent for bird song/calls.

Have found Google lens to be surprisingly accurate. Not very..."romantic"...but effective.

I have always found the Wild Flower Key by Francis Rose to be useful. There's a more recent edition out, I think.

Plants and habitats by Ben Averis 

I was walking up on conwy mountain and found an unusual looking hairy catterpillar. Google Lens told me it was a "catterpillar".

Good to know billions of dollars of machine learning has been well spent. 

+1 for the iNaturalist Seek app. I use it lots for hedgerow plants and trees. You point the camera at the plant and 70% of the time, it says what it is. The dogs.

Roger Phillips is the go to person for mushrooms; I have his "Mushrooms and other fungi" book, which is brilliant and tells you what will kill you in excruciating medical detail and what is good to eat. Meanwhile I buy mushrooms from the supermarket

Oops I missed that this was already posted, fully agree about this book

I "test drove" it all over the local park, mainly on tree species I already knew, and found it to be pretty good. But it also managed to ID a Poplar Hawk Moth, which I found scintillating - the moth and the fact that Google lens managed to ID it.

Google Lens doesn't seem as good as some of the alternatives, last time I used it (this morning) it suggested a plant that only grows in the US (I'm in France). I find PlantNet  (https://identify.plantnet.org ) much better bit it only covers plants.

For books I still have a soft spot for Keeble Martin as its the first plant book I owned but in practise I use the Wild Flower Key (Francis Rose) or The Illustrated Flora of Britain & Northern Europe by Majorie Blamey more often when in the UK & northern France.

When those fail its time to get one of the more technical floras of the shelf

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone.

I've gone for a wildguides British Birds, Colins British Trees and the Wild Flower Key which should cover most bases at the moment.

I'll also have a play with the iNaturalist app. I wonder if they ever get any disappointed naturists reviewing it...

I’ve just experimented with it, acting in the role of a naturist. It came up as ‘small hairy caterpillar.’  I would be disappointed if it wasn’t true....

This one is good too, recommended to students by a colleague of mine as an accessible guide: 

A Field Guide to Grasses, Sedges and Rushes by Dominic Price, published by the Species Recovery Trust.

Check out the wide range of identification guides from the Field Studies Council. Beautiful and practical. See photo for two covering lichen. I'm using these on my holiday.

+1 for the fsc guides. Compact well illustrated and easy to use. Biggest downside is they're not very comprehensive- only room for the most widespread species.

Like everyone else, I mostly use Rose as my go to guide, but it helps loads to be able to use the keys, rather than flicking through the pictures

^+1 to that.