Only 800,000 of these are me

My blog counter recently passed a million hits. I am aware that this is hardly a big deal. When some person my daughters told me about called Ed Sheeran releases a video on YouTube it generally surpasses that by lunchtime, but nonetheless I am quite surprised. I was joking about these mostly being me – I actually set it up some time ago to ignore my own IP address which I thought was impressively technical of me.

I started it off back in 2009 with no fanfare, yet somehow it got picked up. I plugged away, and a little later that year I lost my job and turned to it as a form of intellectual output, albeit in a silly kind of way. I don’t think I can safely argue that this is in any way an intellectual website, but the writing of it at least kept my brain ticking over during that period. Those transformative years, from finance employee to domestic goddess, were probably my favourite ones. I had an endless supply of material and I went birding all the time. Since then it has become progressively harder, culminating in several periods over the last couple of years when I have very nearly jacked it in. Nothing to write about, no time in which to do so, and a feeling that somehow the days of social media which required a modicum of actual effort were coming to an end. Somehow I am still going, not exactly rejuvenated in 2018, but ticking over nicely. It will slump of course, that is the familiar pattern, but ultimately I do still enjoy writing.

It’s nearly impossible to see where these million clicks lie, the rudimentary stats on offer simply don’t show the level of detail required. By far the majority of them are, I assume, regular readers who each time a new post pops up diligently go and have a look and are subsequently disappointed. But seemingly never learn. There have now been 1,564 posts, and I’ve no idea how many times each one, on average, might be viewed.  What I can see though is a top 10 posts, so I thought I would list them here. A birding day in New Delhi has topped the leader board for some time, and my mega-dip of a Red-billed Tropicbird has been enduringly popular. Touching. Schadenfreude rules supreme, and indeed is a theme throughout the following posts. If you want blog hits, dip. And make it a big one!

1) I went to India for a wedding and managed to sneak in some birding

2) The big Tropicbird dip!

3) A map of Wanstead Flats, a bit dull but clearly repeat visited.

4) Rather surprisingly not a dip – Ivory Gull at Spurn

5) In which I explore how my expensive trips to Shetland were a complete waste of money as all the birds then turned up near London

6) Stolen Wheatears

7) More Schadenfreude, but happily not mine!

8) My worst twitch ever

9) I have no idea why this post has 1071 hits.

10) More Tropicbird. The only way to survive these things is to laugh.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I’m not sure I can safely say here’s to the next million, but there’s probably a bit more to come.