Look who showed up this morning! It’s a British Invasion and they’re singing their own version of the Beatles Birthday song,
“They say it’s your Bird-thday
We’re gonna have a good time…
Yes we’re going to a party party.
Yes we’re going to a party party.”
Hello, Rooks! Thanks for coming all the way from Britain to celebrate Outside My Window’s 5th birthday. Do you have any requests?
“Yes, we’ve been reading your blog and learning a lot of useful stuff about birds, weather, plants, flowers, and interstellar space. Now we have 5 questions.”
1. What numbers describe Outside My Window?
That’s easy. The blog averages 577 visitors a day and creates 22% of all traffic to WQED.org. (A big THANK YOU to my readers!)
2. Which posts had the most readers in the past year?
Dorothy wins the prize. Top readership goes to Peter Bell’s amazing pictures of Dorothy attacking a bald eagle over Schenley Plaza. Last year’s Falcon or Hawk? continues to win the top prize from Google search.
3. What spawned the most comments?
When National Audubon posted Have You Seen Any Blue Jays Lately? on their Facebook page it generated 63 comments, but the stand-alone prize goes to Mouse In The House with 26. The mouse struck a cord, eh?
4. What were your favorite photos in the past year?
Wow, that’s hard! Here are three: Peter Bell’s Peregrine versus Bald Eagle (of course Dorothy’s always a favorite), Steve Gosser’s Chick at Tarentum and Chuck Tague’s Walking On Air.
5. Which posts were your personal favorites?
Morning Glory clouds and Move-In Day taught me the most, but I have to say that my favorite was the coming home story of Beauty, the peregrine queen of Rochester, New York in Whose Egg Is This???.
“Oooooooo, peregrines!,” say the rooks, “We’re afraid of peregrines!”
Sorry, guys. In compensation I’m letting you eat the entire cake. (Now that they’re standing on it, it’s theirs!)
(party rooks by Joan Guerin)
p.s. Do you have a favorite post? A suggestion for new topics? Leave a comment and let me know.
Congrats! Kate! I look forward to your blog every morning. I have learned so much from you. THANKS
What Karen B said!
Best Wishes Kate! Looking forward to another interesting, thought-provoking and always entertaining year!
Congrats on 5 years, Kate. You always do an excellent job, with interesting topics. I like the tree identification entries best, myself. Keep up the good work!
My morning favorite for the past 5 years………how time flies (pun intended)! May you have many more years just as entertaining and fulfilling as the last 5! Happy Birthday BirdBlog!
congratulations; I enjoy this site everyday, have absolutely bored alot of friends with my “bird, trees and bushes” tales. As long as I have some things of nature to see on here I am happy with my day. So many many things I did NOT know is what makes it so interesting, especially this year about the backs of the oak leaves. thanks again, keep up the good work. I was able to make to a few times to watch the fledges and my husb. died 4/26/12 so I am not in Oakland much anymore so this “place” is a very important part of my day. Faith
Congratulations, Kate! As with the others, this is my first stop every morning and I so look forward to learning new things. Here is to a new year.
Happy Bird-day….5 years already and it is my start up, so it’s the first thing I see when I open up the computer…I have learned so much and glad I could contribute…very surprised about the Blue Jay, since that was a photo from our old place…brings back good memories when I saw this, but lots of great moments in our new house…exactly 11 years ago today….so it’s an anniversary for us too…Here’s to many more Happy Bird and Flowers and Trees and other Critter Days……
Congrats and keep up the great work, Kate! 🙂
There’s always something to learn here, so many things I didn’t even have an idea about too so I would never have even known to ask about them. One idea that may or may not make interesting posts would be on surprisingly related or unrelated birds. This would be pretty basic for people who are birders, but maybe you can find an interesting angle. For example, I remembering being way more surprised than I should have been that blue jays were in the corvid family. Crows, ravens, magpies…sure! Of course they’re related…but blue jays? Kinda slapped the forehead when I finally made that connection. Don’t know that I’ve got any others off the top of my head though. Been trying to think of another thing like the Friday anatomy series you did the other year. That was really fun. I’d say bird calls would be interesting, but I suspect that would take a LOT of time. Always love reading about things you find in the Pittsburgh Parks since they really out just outside our windows. Maybe we’ll finally have a story of some barred owls this year.
Ooh, bird calls! I like that too — seconded!
Happy 5th!!!
Maybe a slight venture into PA geology sometime? I know I was surprised when I found out I was looking at the tops of eroded plains and not hills in Pittsburgh. There’s also rich fossil history in the area.
Happy Bird-day!!!