01/11/2026
We often come across snails during our gardening sessions, including in piles of damp autumn leaves, and so we thought we’d do a wildlife focus on this group, not least as snails are so frequently mentioned with some muttering about decimated vegetable patches or dahlias.
There are 120 species of snail in the UK; only a few of those species are responsible for damage to gardens and crops. The benefits of having snails in our gardens are many: they provide food for species such as song thrushes, hedgehogs, frogs and various invertebrates; their shells can provide calcium for species such as blue t**s; they contribute to recycling nutrients by eating rotting vegetation, carcasses and excrement, by burrowing in the soil, and then adding to those nutrients when they die. Their empty shells can also provide homes for other creatures and they can help with pollen and spore dispersal. The above is extracted from Nikki Banfield’s blog on the Buglife website, which you can read in full here: https://www.buglife.org.uk/blog/what-are-the-benefits-of-slugs-and-snails/
Some useful links:
-A family friendly identification sheet to get everyone started https://www.wildlifewatch.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-05/SNAILS-ID-SHEET-RGB.jpg
-Key for freshwater and terrestrial snails - even if you don’t get beyond the first 2-3 pages of this 22-page key, it’s fascinating, well-illustrated and in plain English. You’ll find out how to check your latest snail find for whorls, whether it’s right-handed or left-handed (if the spire points upwards, and the mouth is facing you, check whether the opening is to the left or right), tall, round or flattened, ridged, a stranded pond snail (aquatic snails have one pair of tentacles and eyes are usually at the base) or its terrestrial cousin (2 pairs of tentacles, with eyes at the tip of the upper, longer pair).https://www.wildlifebcn.org/sites/default/files/2018-06/Land%20Snails%20Key%20v%202.3%20iv2018%20illustrated.pdf
Photo below of a humble garden snail hiding in one of the pots at Ayres House Studios (it's on the snail ID sheet!)
