Background on the 'Paddock Wood wildlife recording & blog Area'
Ok, so this is the first blog and sets the scene for the coming year. I hope the blog will be interesting for today's inhabitants of Paddock Wood (& visitors from further a field) and for future inhabitants of the town, a chance to see what the wildlife of Paddock Wood was like in 2016. I can't record everything, so must comment upon areas of possible change and those which are interest to me. So it is of course subjective and based on my view & knowledge of wildlife matters in the town. However I hope that with time other residents of the town will update me on the wildlife they have seen and so help to make the diary more inclusive.
So lets make a start on some background on the Paddock Wood area.
Thanks to the trusty Google Earth I can show you a satellite image of the town as it was in April 2015 and indeed as it is now (31/12/2015) before any new housing has begun.
As you can see it is quite compact, with the main housing area of the town lying south of a main railway line, which cuts right across the middle of the county of Kent. North of the railway line is the industrial heart of the town, comprising a large warehouse & distribution centre and a number of smaller industrial units. There is also a smaller railway line (the Medway Valley Line) which heads north towards Maidstone & the Medway towns.
An agricultural town, established before the Doomsday book (1086), Paddock Wood grew substantially in the mid 1800's, with the coming of the railway, situated as it was at a busy railway junction. Further large expansion of housing occurred in the early 1960's and later in the 1980's. So you can see the increased housing, planned for over the next 10 years, is just the latest round of continual expansion for the town. Whilst the final agreement has yet to be confirmed by Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, it is expected that the new housing (1000 + houses) will be concentrated along the eastern, south eastern and southern edges of the town.
What & Where will I record for this blog in 2016
You may well ask " What wildlife is there, in what appears to be an already urban environment ?"
This, of course, is the purpose of this 12 month long blog. To discover & record what there is to see during 2016 and so to act as a wildlife 'base line' for future comparisons to be made.
I will be concentrating all wildlife recording and blog posts within the wildlife recording tetrad called TQ6644, a 2km x 2km square, shown on the Google Earth image between the marked UK grid lines numbered 66 - 68 (west to east) & 44 - 46 (south to north).
Future uses of this blog
I have been stuck by how often we all look back on old photographs of a city, town or village where we live. We are often fascinated on what it look like say 25 / 50 or 100 years ago. I hope that future inhabitants of Paddock Wood will be able to view this blog as a very detailed 'postcard of life' in 2016. Not human life but wildlife. So often I have wanted to 'dive into' those old photographs and see and hear the wildlife which was living when the photograph was taken. I hope that this blog will do just that and offer readers of the future a glimpse of the wildlife of the past and be able to compare it with whatever year they are living in.
Tomorrow, 01 January 2016, our journey begins :-).
