Introduction to Articles
(If you have read this Introduction before, you may go directly to the Articles Index)
In this new section, we feature articles that highlight animals and plants living at or adjacent to Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve.
Here we present many fascinating details about the lives of these species, and include photographs showing them and their habitat.
The first such illustrated article on our site was Yellow Trout-lily - A Lily of Many Aliases by Stanwyn G. Shetler. I have moved it from the main site and placed it in this new section. Not only is this particular article interesting and well-written, it serves as a good example of the type of material we can feature here.
Loudoun County's first official Nature Preserve provides many diverse habitat types and shelters an enormous variety of plants and animals, providing us with a unique opportunity to partner with the biota we share this planet with, and to study and appreciate the fascinating and awe-inspiring systems that make it all possible.
For example, Monarch Butterflies rely almost exclusively on the milkweed genus for egg laying and feeding during their larval stages. If we preserve this single plant, we extend a helping hand to the Monarch Butterfly and help it maintain its place among our insect friends.
We invite all who would like to contribute articles for this section to get in touch with us. There are many talented photographers and writers among our membership and our site visitors, and we hope you will join us in making this site one of the most interesting of its type.
I'm considering putting some guidelines on the site, too, where you will be able to look at some simple techniques you can use to create articles that work well in the computer environment.
For those who have always wanted to learn something about the workings of Web Sites, I could even include some simple HTML coding examples and guidelines on images, so you might put together articles on your own computer and see how they work before submitting them. You probably already have the simple and basic software needed to do this.
Please let us have your comments and suggestions! It will be helpful to me if you use a phrase like 'Banshee Reeks Article' in the subject block in E-mails, so I or my ISP will not delete any of them as irrelevant 'Spam'.
Thank you kindly,
Robert K. MacDowell
Webmaster