This last couple of months I have been terrible busy at work and with other life things. My Crows of Arroyos has become harder and harder to find content that I am excited about.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand I am in a writing slump not a permanent give up on my blog about birds, nature, history and of course crows. We all have from time to time a moment of introspection on what we are about.
A good way to go about the future is to see what the past contained. Take away from that what really thrills one and what was a drag. So..here goes on a look back on 7 years of my blogging adventure.
It all started on November 21, 2010 with a new blog built on WordPress (which I still use and love). It was called Arroyos Crow World and it began with this:
Please join me in glimpsing the world of Crows.
For the past several years I have followed the local residents of my neighborhood. We humans live in our houses and by looking up we can see a whole another world. The Crows have territories, families and parties just like we do.
Wow – going back to read that I realize that I still follow that course. I have not really been able to completely understand the why they do things (I have tried) but it is more about where they are and what I observed by looking up.
The next day on November 22nd, I uploaded my first picture and wrote the second blog called “Crow Snow Day”. Check it out! The first picture is a crow pair on my backyard fence. Something they still do today.
Look at how far digital photography has come and how grainy my old camera was. Just one of many things that change over a few short years.
To my surprise of the 655 posts only 287 were about crows. Here are some more statistics for those that love math.
- Total Posts in 7 years – not counting this one – 655
- 36,573 views
- 535 is the most views in one day – October 17, 2011 – Crow Stalker and Amanda Knox Paparazzi
And what retrospect would not be really worth its salt if we didn’t have a Top 5 countdown!
Number 5 – Crow Stalker and Amanda Knox Paparazzi
Here I was almost a year into my blogging fun and one Sunday on my walk to “stalk” crows ran across a pair of paparazzi outside Amanda’s mother’s house. She had just got home from being released in Italy and was all the rage in our neighborhood. That included lots of extra traffic and of course news helicopters.
This posting has had 931 visits over the last 6 years. As I noted above more than half happened on the day after I posted it. I got published on some Amanda Knox chat group and anything Amanda was grabbed upon. That included my encounter.
Number 4 – Crow Pellet
974 visits to this post show that lots of folks are interested in this icky subject. Could be they are just thinking guns? I like to think it is such an odd subject with little out there on it that my post got folks the information they wanted.
Check out what the crow threw up in front of me on a piling looks like. Placed perfect for a great photo!
Number 3 – Crows – Ravens and Halloween
This October 2011 post got 1,046 views over time. Every year when Halloween rolls around folks find this posting and educate themselves on crow lore. Here is my lead in paragraph that sets the tone of smart crows and our aversion to untidy sights.
Corvids (Crows & Ravens) are some of the most popular symbols of Halloween. Months ago I wrote an article about why people think Crows are Evil. In that article I talked about how we as humans might fear a bird that is so smart. Or is it that in our clean and tidy world we don’t take well to them feeding on battlefield dead.
Number 2 – Ruins of Longacres – The Foundations
Close to where I work in Renton, Washington is the site of where a horse racetrack of great aclaim and beauty used to stand. In the 1990s it was sold to the Boeing Company and then redeveloped into office space. The racetrack was torn down to the dismay of many. Almost 20 years later, I stumbled across what was left and started a series of articles to record the “Ruins”. This blog has netted 1,088 views. 2,068 total views on the whole series. That made all the stomping around in the brush, hundreds of photos and hours of research worth every moment.
This series included 14 blog posts, starting with the a mysterious entrance unit that still stands under I-405 (Longacres Relic), then the three main posts “Ruins of Longacres” Foundation, Green Wall and The Track. A former employee sent me aerial photos and I did a few posts of those. I produced a small video of the track which you can view below.
Number 1 – Its Molting Time – Crows, Herons & Madrona Trees
This is my all time most visited blog post at 2,921. When I wrote it in 2011 I never thought it would be the one that just kept on giving. It outlasted the Amanda craze, beat out the Halloween post and many posts on my everlasting love of Baby Crows (6 Baby Crows Crying is #10 at 380).
When I go look at the ways people find this blog, I find it is not the crows! It is the madrona trees that people admire and want to know more about. This photo of one molting (see below) is is in the top 5 photos you get when you google “Madrona Trees Molting”. Batgurrl.net has 3 of those top 5.
I have to mention I have some favorites of my own. Let us call them Honerable Mentions.
- My Duwamish Adventure – This was many months of wandering along the trail or roads on the West side of the Duwamish ending at the river’s mouth. The end was a bit disappointing since it was not accessible to me but I did a video of it and what we had done to our river.
- Georgetown Steam Plant – Electrical power was generated with steam more than a 100 years ago in Seattle. This plant is now a relic of a time gone by. I was enchanted by the many photo moments I got there plus some odd energy that I think are ghosts.
1906 Seattle Electric Company Steam Plant
- Green River Trail – Like the Duwamish series I walked this trail along the Green River from South Seattle to its end in Kent. Lots to see and write about ranging from crows, old houses, the river, eagles, history and serendipity.
Eagle cools off next to Green River
- Renton Crow Roost – every fall and winter hundreds of crows flock to the valley close to my office. I am never disappointed in how entertaining they are each year.
2018 is here and what will it bring? Is Serendipity going to carry me forward? Will a pair of crows nest in a tree I can watch from start to finish? Will a historical ruin catch my eye and the hearts of others again?
That is blogging! Living in the moment and sharing it for others to enjoy too.
