You may be interested to know that "The Friends of Newpool Meadows" are a group of local residents who help maintain the meadows for all to enjoy. For more information visit their website...Friends of Newpool Meadows
A note from the current website administrator.
"I initially started this blog for myself, in order to record what I had seen on Newpool Meadows Village Green. I soon realised that there wasn't really any centralised place for everyone who enjoys the wildlife on the Meadows to record their sightings and wildlife experiences. Having contacted Ellen and others who visit the site, it seemed like a good idea to open up this site to anyone interested in building up a record of the flora and fauna that is living on, or using the Meadows in some way. Hopefully this may help promote Newpool Meadows as a great place to see wildlife and could provide a written record that may be useful for the future protection and preservation of the village green"
David Goodwin.
What is being recorded
Basically any kind of plant, tree, animal, bird, insect, reptile can be listed. With birds we need to be careful not to record birds that are obviously not using the site in any way and are just flying high overhead. Even so it is still good to mention these in a blog posting for interest sake, but they won't be added to the site bird list. Aerial feeding birds, Swift, Swallow, House Martin and Sand Martin should be listed when flying over as they may well be feeding on insects from the Meadows.
Viewing the blog
The blog is visible as read only to anyone in the world, but only registered authors can post entries. Comments are moderated as they can sometimes attract inappropriate content
It is pretty self explanatory, but there are a few of points that may not be obvious. If you click on any images that appear on the main "Home" page of the blog you will get an enlarged version of the picture. The lists of species on the other pages are obviously not complete, and it will take time for us to list everything that we find. Also, the "Gallery" page has links to "flickr" as the actual pictures are not stored on the blog site. Therefore you browser will open a new window to flickr.
Making Posts to the blog
It would be great if as many people as possible could contribute to the blog. Some entries are already there as an example of what can be done. If you would like to contribute there are a couple of things you need to know. Firstly you need to request to join by emailing newpoolmeadowswildlife@gmail.com Also you will need a Google account, but not necessarily a Google email address. When you make a request to join you will receive an invitation by email. If you do not have a Google account you should get a prompt to create one. You can then accept the invitation and you will be added as a blog author shortly after. When you are registered as an author and you are logged on to Google you will see at the top right hand of your screen there is a "New Post" button. Just click on that and type away! Adding images is also very easy but it is requested that a maximum of one or two are included with each post as they quickly take up lots of space. The best place for lots of pictures will be in the flickr group site.
Loading pictures to the flickr group
Pictures cannot be loaded directly to the flickr group. In order to contribute you need to set up your own account on flickr, then some or all of your pictures can be added to the group. This may seen a bit convoluted but its not actually as bad as it seems. If you remove a picture from your own account that has also been added to the group, then that picture will also be removed from the group. Other online photo sharing websites have been investigated but flickr, although far from perfect seems to offer more options for free.
It is a bit beyond this page of simple instructions to go deeply into flickr, but all you need to know is on their website https://www.flickr.com/
If anyone has just the odd picture that they would like to have added to the gallery and does not want to, or is unable to have their own flickr account, the odd one could be emailed to the groups email address at the top of this page. It must be stressed though, that this really should just be for the odd picture as it would create a high workload for the administrator to work on lots of pictures this way. Also it should be noted that any pictures sent in this way would be credited to the administrator, not the original owner.
