1. Spot a rare and difficult to identify bird.
2. Photograph it.
3. Put the pictures on your blog.
4. Notify the local birding / twitching community through a few email lists.
5. Lean back with a drink and relax.
6. Watch the number of visitors to your blog soar (especially cool when the bird you recorded was a raptor).
A sweet 180 visitors - This was by far and a wide margin the highest number of visitors per day ever on Belltowerbirding. Only once before did I manage a three-digit number of (I think) 132 when I hosted I and the Bird.
So praise the Buzzard for showing itself, hail to the Crows for mobbing it and drawing my attention to the hawk and cheers to all those visitors who were either curious or skeptical and thought the news worthy of being checked out.
Please come back again.
I know you [the ones who came here for the Buzzard and the Buzzard only] probably won't as there will not be Buzzards here every day, but it was still nice having you around and I appreciated your presence here.
Rock on.
There are still good birds to be seen and themes to be blogged about.
It is spring, the birds' migrations are all over us and I like that.
By the way, the smaller Friday peak was my Savannah Sparrow post at which I hinted in an Email to the SE Michigan birding list. You see, it always works, it's just that raptors are apparently almost four times as popular with birders as New World sparrows are.
Who'd have guessed?
10 comments:
Jochen, now you know what to do to get to the 1,000,0000 mark before you turn 250 years old....
spot a rare bird every week!
Laurent
"Geez, Laurent, do you have any idea just how excessively unrealistic a comparably rare bird would be every week and how extremely rare a Long-legged Buzzard in Germany is?"
"Well, yeah, Jochen, just about as rare as a Booted Eagle in Germany, I guess."
"Yes, you are right Laurent. And you see, exactly one week before the Long-legged, I spotted a dark-morph Booted Eagle at almost exactly the same spot. Now how cool's that."
"Sounds really cool, Jochen."
"Well no, it isn't. I mean, I surely and certainly did see a Booted, but in that particular case, I did not have a camera with me."
"That was very stupid, Jochen. Really dumb!"
"Tell me about it..."
Same thing happened to me when I found a Glaucous Gull at a local landfill.
A good day, indeed.
Posting a link to the local listserv is a pretty sure-fire way to get traffic as long as it's not done too often. Hopefully you will get a few more regular readers as a result.
there is never an excuse to not have a camera and a pair of binoculars with you. I am investigating getting the latest nikon camera surgically implanted in to the side of my skull, with a Swaro El32 in my left hand.
I will be in Frankfurt for the night this Sunday. Any chance you could convince it to fly a little further north and then to hang around my hotel for a bit? I can send the address/google map if needs be.
Happy birding
Dale
http://alpinebirds.blogspot.com
Nate, that was a very good find, I remember it well.
John, I have also noticed that my blog recently turned into a "please comment on this mystery bird" thing, and repetitions may bore eventually. I think I may eventually start a second page/blog which will serve precisely that purpose to reserve Belltowerbirding for my writing.
We'll see.
Dale, yes, I was also fascinated by the Terminator movies for that reason. Dang, I never realized you were in Frankfurt (to the North). This is why I sent the bird to the South-East, towards Austria! We MUST communicate our travels more thoroughly, I tell you, there's room for improvement!
damn. think you could send a quick text and tell it to either get down here quickly or to turn tail and head up to the Frankfurt airport.
that would be nice.
thank you.
Gee, some people will do anything for blog traffic! :)
Dale, you are aware that shortly afterwards there WAs a Long-legged Buzz in Austria?
not mine though, judging by the pictures.
Wren, you have now idea just how far I will go with the post on the Great Tit I have in the pipe...
Danke sehr an den Autor.
Gruss Nanna
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