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Of course, on the whole wild animals have finely tuned senses that are adapted to ensure you won't see them. But the more time you spend outdoors in search of a close encounter with wild animals, the sooner you develop the skills to increase your chances of getting close.

Do you have your own top tips on having close encounters with British wildlife? If you do, it would be great to hear from you - you can share your knowledge and ideas right here.

Field-craft is largely based on common sense. Here are my top tips:

Use your senses

• Be aware of the slightest sound, the smallest movement. Develop peripheral vision. By responding immediately to movement seen in the corner of your eye you increase your chances of spotting an animal tenfold
• Scanning. Make a point of moving your head more - to the left and right, up and down. It may sound obvious but by constantly scanning, you increase your chances of seeing the animals and their tracks
• Knowing where to look for animals. There are certain features that are worth a closer look. Owls and birds of prey, for example, use telegraph poles or fence posts as lookouts
• Sound often betrays an animal's whereabouts, but it is often really hard to pinpoint where the animal is. A good way of identifying the source of the sound is by using your hands, cupped quite close to the ears and slowly panning your head through a horizontal plane. Make a mental note of where the sound is at its loudest then repeat the process
• You can also draw the animal towards you by using sound to attract the animals. Using your hands as sonic reflectors also works well in reverse - especially important with animals with good eyesight. Should your creature decide to walk behind you, it is possible to keep tabs on it simply by cupping your hands in front of your ears and listening to its progress

Avoiding detection
Whatever your intentions, all people are regarded with varying degrees of fear by most animals. This is why naturalists have developed a whole range of tricks to avoid detection.

The main thing to learn is how to move without disturbing them too much:

• Get there first. You can get much better views of some animals if you work out where they are going to be and get out there first. The golden rule is to behave as though you are being watched the whole time: keep quiet and make any move slowly - that includes turning your head
• Walk quietly and carefully. Maintain constant tension in your legs, slightly bending your knees the whole time. This way you'll have far more control over your weight distribution than if you walk in a relaxed way. It means that if a twig starts to creak underfoot, you can shift your step to avoid breaking it
• Use a deliberate heel-toe action which helps distribute your weight slowly and evenly over the ground

Smell signals: as well as being noisy - we also stink:

• We can't help it and animals find our scent scary. The only way to counteract this is to be constantly aware of the wind direction. The wet finger method you probably all know is very inaccurate. A much better way is to release a light object - a blade of grass, a dead leaf, dry soil - that will all blow away and tell you the wind direction. With a bit of practice you can sense the gentlest wind on your face or wind and so keep a running check on wind direction
• Breath holding. Perhaps one of the strongest human scents is our own breath, so when an animal is unavoidably about to pass downwind of you, try to breathe very shallowly or hold your breath altogether. This may or may not work - but it certainly adds to the excitement of the experience!

• You can't move around or wait undetected without successful camouflage. Obviously make sure your camouflage suits your surroundings: think about where you are going to be watching wildlife and choose appropriate colours
• If you have dark skin you are at a real advantage, because a white hand or face shows up like a beacon in most habitats There are several ways of disguising lighter patches of skin. In summer use green and brown face paint. Look at well camouflaged animals for clues on how best to use the paint. Moths woodcock and nightjar have a muddled blend of browns and blacks and white in their colour schemes. The pale areas help disrupt the outline of the animal. Using the same strategy you can have a few bits of skin clear of paint. And if you haven't got any face paint, you can always find some mud!
• Of all the parts of the human body it's our heads that seem to distinguish us instantly to other animals. Therefore make the outline of your head irregular with, for example, a netting hat which you can stick vegetation too

Hide and seek:

• If you don't intend moving around to get close to animals, then you can consider a hide. But the introduction of a hide into a habitat can be quite disruptive if not done properly. Often you'll have to hide the hide, by carefully blending it into the surrounding habitat
• There are two main ways of using a hide: one is to set it up and try to attract the animal within sight; the other is carefully to introduce it to a location to which you know the animal is likely to return
• To reduce further risk of disturbing the animal you can use a 'walk-away'. This is a second person who accompanies you to the hide and then walks away. The same person can then approach the hide at the end of the day and collect you. The idea is convince the animals that you only visited the hide for a very short time. It assumes animals can't count!

So now you know how to get close to wild animals, how about finding out where to go to see the best wildlife in the UK?

But where to start? Below are some links which will help you to find the best that the UK has to offer:

• Find a wildlife place or event near you with help from BBC Breathing Places
• BBC Wales: Places to go
• Nature's Calendar: Wildlife locations and spectacles
• Hands on Nature: Discover Nature activities near you

From elsewhere:

• National Trust: Top places to visit for wildlife
RSPB reserves

• Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust
• The Woodland Trust: Directory of Woodland Trust woods
• The Wildlife Trusts: Wildlife Watch (for children)
• Forestry Commission: The UK's forests
• Natural England: Information on English nature reserves
• Countryside Council for Wales: Which species are special in Wales
• Scottish Natural Heritage: Scotland's national nature reserves
• Environment and Heritage Service Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland's nature reserves
• Birdwatch: Where to watch guides

How to watch wildlife:

• RSPB: Watching birds
• BTO: Birdwatcher's code

Some of the best:

Grey seals:

• Cornish coast
• Blakeney Point, Norfolk
• Farne Islands, Northumberland
• Donna Nook, Lincolnshire
• Cardigan Bay, Ceredigion
• Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli), Gwynedd
• Isle of May
• Monach Isles
• Murlough National Nature Reserve, County Down

Bats:

• Arlington Court, Devon
• Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall
• Sence Valley Forest Park, Leicestershire
• Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Barnes, London
• Bushy Park, Richmond
• Woodchester Mansion, Gloucestershire
• Wimpole, Cambridgeshire
• Radipole Lake, Dorset
• Carew Castle and Tidal Mill, Pembrokeshire
• Culzean castle in Ayrshire
• Knapdale Forest, Argyll and Bute
• Crom Estate, Fermanagh

Seabirds:

• Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire
• St Bees Head, Cumbria
• Farne Islands, Northumberland
• Lundy Island, Devon
• Berry Head, Devon
• Ramsey Island, Pembrokeshire
• South Stack Cliffs, Anglesey
• Fowlsheugh, Aberdeenshire
• Sumburgh Head, Shetland
• Mull of Galloway, Dumfries & Galloway
• Bass Rock, North Berwick
• St Kilda, Outer Hebrides
• Rathlin, County Antrim

Dolphins

• Chanonry Point

Basking sharks
Basking sharks are seen all around the UK and Irish coasts, but the best places to see them are along the west coast of the UK, and both the east and west coasts of Ireland.

Look at the Basking Shark Project's website for more information. They also have a code of conduct for approaching them. Manx Basking Shark Watch's website is a mine of information about these wonderful fish too.

With some of the world's biggest and best colonies found on our coastlines, Britain is internationally important for seabirds. 90% of the world's Manx shearwaters, 68% of the world's northern gannets, and 60% of the world's great skuas are found in Great Britain and Ireland.

Initially, the problem was thought to be caused by their food. Many seabirds feed on sand eels. Although not really exploited for human food, sand eels are used for animal feed and fertilizer so they are a target for industrial fishing.

This fishing, some argued, was affecting seabird levels, especially that of auks because they take sand eels in deeper water. Because of this, fishing for sand eels was banned in the North Sea, and the seabird populations improved.

But when the seabird population subsequently crashed again, it became clear fishing could not be the major cause. Research carried out points to other factors.

The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology carried out studies on the Isle of May. It found links between declining kittiwake productivity and higher local sea temperatures. For sand eel eggs to hatch into larvae in winter, they need the right sort of plankton, at the right time. But higher winter sea temperatures change the composition of the plankton, so the right sort of plankton wasn't available for the sand eels.

The Sir Alister Hardy Foundation For Ocean Science recently announced a staggering 70% reduction in the biomass of zooplankton in the north east Atlantic since the 1960s. On top of this, the cold water zooplankton Calanus finmarchicus is being replaced by a warmer-water species, Calanus helgolandicus.

This is changing the range of animals such as basking sharks, turtles, several species such as sunfish and swordfish and invertebrates such as octopus and squid. It's also possible that climate change is responsible for the population explosion of pipefish in the past five years, which seabirds mistake for palatable prey, resulting in chick deaths and starvation.

According to BirdLife's Climatic Atlas of Breeding Birds, which scopes the impact of various climate scenarios, "five seabird species (which spend some or all of their lives at sea) are projected to 'lose suitable climate' (and thus habitat) and therefore likely to suffer extinction from the UK: Leach's petrel, Arctic and great skuas, red-throated and black-throated diver."

It might also be to do with what's happening to the birds when they are elsewhere in winter.

Herring gull numbers have declined by more than 50% in the last 25 years. The RSPB says the boom in urban gull populations has masked an overall decline in herring gulls nationally. Surveys carried out on the Isle of Man show there was a 28% drop in the number of breeding herring gulls between 1985 and 1999.

Their decline could be linked to the decline of the fishing industry, because traditionally they have fed from the discards from trawlers. Their eggs and young are also vulnerable to foxes and rodents and they may be losing out to other species, particularly the lesser black-backed gull.

Thankfully, there are some success stories. Seabirds on the Farne Islands had a successful breeding season last year. The internationally important population of shags there had their best breeding season for over a decade.

The seabird colonies in Wales have remained largely stable and in Shetland, where I've spent a lot of time lately, numbers of Arctic terns are higher than they have been for many years. Of course we'll have to wait for the results of the breeding season before we know for sure.

Let's hope for some more happy news like this soon. Overall, it's a complex and dynamic problem and one that we should be open-minded about, while looking at all the different influences to try do something positive for seabirds in Britain.

It's also worth remembering that seabirds are long-lived so they only have to produce two young in a lifetime in order to maintain a stable population. So long term these bad years may not be such a problem.

More information about Britain's seabird colonies:

• The National Trust Farne Islands
• Manx shearwaters on Skomer
• Manx shearwaters on Bardsey
• Terns on the Skerries
• Ynys Feurig, Cemlyn Bay and The Skerries
• South Stack Cliffs
• Cemlyn Nature Reserve
• Gannets on Grassholm

So I decided to draw a picture to illustrate cameraman Jamie McPherson's (and our) doomed attempts to catch them.

But there's something missing... and that's where you come in. What do you think the pair of polecats are saying as they foil Jamie yet again? Please post your ideas below.

Update 9th June:
Thank you so much to everyone who sent a suggestion in. As I revealed on last night's Springwatch Unsprung these are my faves:

Loganpointers said: "You know these eye masks really are the perfect disguise"

johnnyboy58 thought: "Don't look behind you now, but we're being sketched!"

And from SuffolkLiz, the one I thought was best: "Hey, I think he's kneeling in one of yours..."

You can follow this mission on the show but we'd also like to build up a picture of polecat populations across the UK. The muntjac survey we did for Autumnwatch was so successful we'd like to do the same again for polecats. And this is where you come in...

With your help we'll be able to build a map of polecat populations across the country.

(If you're unsure about the difference between a polecat and a ferret have a look at this clip from BBC Wales' wildlife expert Iolo Williams.)

Thank you!

Update 27th May
Wow! Thanks for the amazing response. There's been some really interesting sightings here. Please keep them coming in. Here's a slideshow of some of the pictures you've sent in so far.