Announcement

The KOS is issuing a challenge to all photographers of birds and wildlife in Kent!!!

The photographic section of the KOS website is being completely changed. There will be a photographic ‘competition’ every month. We now have a photographic panel that will assess all submitted photographs each month and the photograph deemed the best will be credited and will grace the front page of the KOS website for the next month. Obviously, should we receive a huge amount of photographs, (which will all be acknowledged) I hope you all understand that not all will appear on the site.

Although the page for common bird photos of the current year will remain the same, the archive of common birds will disappear and the very best two shots of each species in each plumage and in flight will be accessible through the Kent List main page. It is our desire to get each species seen in Kent recorded photographically and placed for access on the site. So a second ‘competition’ of sorts will take place. I hope that it will be each photographer’s aim to get a photograph on this page as these will be the very best two photographs that we have of each species in each plumage. However, photographs may be replaced should a better one (in the opinion of the panel) be submitted! Species which have been photographed will sport a camera beside their name and access to the photographs will be via clicking on this camera. It will be easy to spot what is missing and the aim for photographers will be to fill those gaps!

The rarity archive is also due to change. Access to this in future will be via clicking on an individual species on the main Kent List page. All county records for each rarity will be listed and those for which we have photographs will have a camera icon beside them. Clicking on each of these will bring up photographs of each individual. If you click on a scarce bird which is not a county rarity such as Bee-eater, you will be taken to a page which has all the photographs of all the individuals we currently possess. It's going to take some time and a lot of work before this project is completed but eventually, when all photographs are linked, the old rarity archive page will disappear from the site.

The current format of the Wildlife page doesn't wrk as well as anticipated and Terry has had huge software problems which have stopped him being able to place anything on the site recently. A new Title page is being launched for the KOS site very soon and for a short while Wildlife will not be accessible whilst we change the site. Eventually, the wildlife site will be relaunched in much the same format as the bird photogaphs. We'll be looking for the very best shots of each species photographed in the country. I hope also that by clicking on Spring, for example, the program will sort out what you might be able to find at that time of year. However, there is a lot of work to do there too. At the end of the day all this should improve the site considerably, I hope.

Please send all photos by email copying to both Marc Heath and Steve Ashton at:

heathym007@aol.com and Ashsteve55@aol.com

So, photographers, the challenge is laid down! It’s over to you! Have fun!