A daze of warmth
The summer solstice passed in a daze of warmth, birdsong and long, sunlit hours. This morning in my Suffolk village the dawn chorus woke me up at ten to three in the morning: given that there was still light in the sky until well past 10pm that's the briefest of nights. The ears are forming on our wheat and barley and the field margins are thick with poppies, mallow, hogweed and other wildflowers. The grassland butterflies are emerging, and swifts scream overhead.
We've welcomed a new guest contributor to our team. Sally-Ann Smurthwaite joins Linda Clark and Vanessa Wright, and is posting to the app covering nature in Wales. We want to continue to make the information in Encounter more and more localised, and I'm keen to find someone in lowland Scotland next, followed by Ireland, so please do drop me a line if that might be you or someone you know.
In May we successfully rolled out an update to Encounter. As well as lots of essential back-end changes that were needed to keep the app running well, we were able to include our most user-requested feature: the ability to tap an image in the Inspire Me or Learn More feed to make it bigger. You can also tap contributors avatars now, to read more about them, and donate to support us directly from the main menu: the three horizontal lines at the top right of the app.
What we haven't been able to do yet is build the search function. It's an expensive piece of work and we're looking for a corporate sponsor or generous individual to help us with this project. Adding search to the app will make it possible for you to find your own past journal entries without scrolling, locate posts about particular species, or compare one date with another. It will make the Encounter experience so much more satisfying and useful. Can you help us? Get in touch if so.
We’re so grateful to the 24 people who have donated to support Encounter so far, both monthly and via one-off payments. From the very start, I've wanted the app to be free of banner adverts and pop-ups, and we’ve been proud to have kept it that way so far. We need more of you to help out with a £3/month donation, or whatever you feel is fair. You can do that here.
Our partners Meaningful Planet continue to support the restoration of nature via several projects across Britain. A new mobile provider, they run off the vast (and fast!) EE network. If you switch to them using our link you get 10% off your bills for life, and we earn money too. They offer free EU roaming, and you can keep your existing number. SIM-only plans start at just £11/month.
