Crunching the numbers

I’ve completed my annual bird survey today. The instructions were to record the largest number of each type of bird that was seen or heard at any one time – not the total number of each bird over the hour. That was a bit complicated but bird numbers were low in the garden today so it was not as arduous as I thought it might be.

The common sparrow headed the list, followed by wax eyes, blackbirds, chaffinches, starlings, and goldfinches. I could hear a Tui over the road feasting on the red flowering gum trees so that was included too.

Male chaffinch

I blogged about the 2011 bird survey here.

I received an email late this afternoon telling me that a new website is being set up so that I can record any observations relating to nature but it will also be where future annual bird survey results will be loaded. I’m really pleased about that as there are times when I see a new bird in the garden and wish I could tell someone “official” about it.

The other numbers I crunched today were on my blog. WordPress provides a raft of statistical data and I do check my stats regularly. This post will be number 308. My readers have posted 966 comments and I now have 70 blog followers.

Thank you to all my readers. It is very gratifying to know that you enjoy my postings and continue to turn the pages on my blog.

There is an interesting statistic amongst the people who regularly comment on my blog and that is that 4 of them have names beginning with the letter “J”.

I also have a regular group of “likers” and it is always a pleasure to find your “Like” appearing in my notifications.

11 of my blog posts have been “shared” and that seems an extra honour and potentially widens my audience.

Spam wins the day with 1,356 items that have been successfully thwarted at the cyber boundary of my blog and I am very grateful about that.

I began blogging with so much trepidation but now it is almost a habit and I miss the days when I don’t post something. I began writing to satisfy an inner voice but having gathered followers I feel spurred on to provide something that I hope will interest you in some way. My photography interest is proving to be very satisfying to me and that has been a surprise too.

Thank you again for reading, lurking, liking and commenting. You all enrich my days.

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Thank you!

The tally of hits on my blog has just gone over 4000. So a big thank you to all the people who pop in to read posts, who have clicked “follow”, who link from Facebook and Linkedin or via search engines.

I’m glad you are out there and give my blog your attention. It spurs me on to keep writing and taking photos.

Flowers are often given as thank you gifts so here is a photo, taken today, of my Aladdin patio rose, flowering abundantly for the second time this season. Enjoy and thank you!

Global readers

Early this year WordPress.com sent me a report on my blog for 2011. I was really interested to learn that I had had at least one person in the following countries read my blog.

New Zealand, Australia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Israel, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Italy, United States of America, Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Columbia, Ecuador and Brazil.

So welcome to my blog and thank you very much for reading it. I will be very interested to see whether I have reached people in different countries at the end of 2012.

Test results

Some of you might have wondered what I was testing for yesterday when I posted the word “Test” and nothing else in my post yesterday.

I had heard from another WordPress blogger that Facebook was not going to publish any WordPress blogposts after 22 November 2011. I wanted to check that out and so in haste simply sent the quick post.

I am pleased to report that I can still publish to Facebook so my loyal readers can still access my blog that way. The other way is to subscribe using the “Email subscription” widget on the left hand side of my blog.

It is nice to know you are reading my blog. Thank you, it makes a real difference in my life:-)