• Otters and Water Voles: Ecology, Surveying and Conservation 

    This beginner to intermediate course will provide an introduction to Otters and Water Voles in the UK. You will learn about the ecology and conservation of both species and explain what to look for and how to conduct surveys.  This course will include: Otter behaviour, natural history, status and legal…

  • Botany Training

    We offer a large variety of courses that cover grasses, flowering plants, surveying skills, and QGIS. We can also provide bespoke or on-demand courses tailored to suit your training needs and availability. Browse all botany courses Botanical Skills for Ecologists **New course for…

  • NVC: Summer Habitat Survey – Understanding and Describing Plant Communities

    This intermediate course will provide you with the skills required to confidently use the National Vegetation Classification (NVC) in summer as a framework to approach how plant communities are responding to environmental change. This course will include: An element of botanical identification of different plant species. Using the NVC to explore plant communities.

  • Trees: Summer Identification

    This beginner course will introduce you to British trees, exploring tree biology, ecology, and identification. You will start by looking at the basics of the biological definition of a tree and their place in the plant kingdom. You will then be introduced to the two main types of tree…

  • Lakes and Literature

    Follow in the footsteps of Beatrix Potter and William Wordsworth as you explore the landscape that inspired them both. Our Lakes and Literature residential will take you on a journey of discovery throughout this stunning landscape. Read more We will visit key locations within the Lake District to help…

  • Dipterists Forum Identification workshop: Tachinid Flies

    Tachinid flies are a very diverse group of flies with very specialised life histories.  The great majority of species are parasitoids of the juvenile stages of a wide range of invertebrate orders such as Lepidoptera, Coleoptera and Hemiptera, but hosts also include some Hymenoptera, Diptera, Dermaptera and Phasmids.  At the…

  • Matt Smith

    (Self-employed Entomological Consultant) Matt is a entomologist with an interest in various groups, including Tachinid flies, and has helped co-organise the Tachinid Recording Scheme since its inception.

  • Chris Raper

    (Natural History Museum, London) Chris has specialised in the identification of Tachinid flies since the year 2000, after attending the first Tachinid workshop run by the Dipterist’s Forum and Robert Belshaw, the author of the 1993 RES Handbook. It was after this workshop that he and Matt Smith decided…