In my first full year of running this website/blog I have received 90,510 individual visitors from 189 countries who have looked at 28,405 pages on the site. This is an average of 247.3 pages a day and is currently running at about 462.6 pages a day. I have also received visitors from all 51 US states and 12 of the 13 Canadian Provinces and Territories. I would like to thank every one of you who has visited the site over the past year and hope you continue visiting and spread the word. I am, hopefully, going to upgrade my camera gear towards the end of the year, to a much higher specification system to allow me to take better photographs of the birds I see, so if you keep visiting I should have better quality photographs later in the year. Again thanks for your support and I hope you enjoy the next years’ worth of installments.
The countries that have visited the most times (individual visitors) are indicated on the pie-chart below with Saudi Arabia number one. Other regional countries are also represented with United Arab Emirates in seventh place and Bahrain in ten place.
Writing a blog can be a time consuming exercise but it all appears worthwhile when you get nice comments from viewers and corrections to otherwise misidentified birds or animals. These corrections have added to my knowledge over the year and I appreciate the help of everyone who has contacted me. A number of visiting and resident birders have allowed me to publish their records and Phil Roberts, Bob Roberts, AbdulRahman Al-Sirhan, Sander Willems, Andre Marais & Brendan Kavanagh have also allowed me to use their excellent photos, and to them all I am thankful. I have also been contacted by a number of local people who are willing to try to increase the knowledge of the local population about the birdlife and habitats around them which in turn will empower the local youth with marketable skills (eco-tourism) and knowledge that can help advance their lives while assisting with biodiversity research, monitoring and conservation. Everyone knows the power of the internet, and small blogs, such as this one, can help with conservation issues even if only in a very small way, but again everyone knows the proverb ‘from a small acorn a great Oak grows”. I am convinced that by increasing the awareness of the local population in Saudi Arabia as well as continuing to spread the word on how important a number of areas are for birds and wildlife in the Kingdom more can and will be done to safeguard these birds and habitats. My website was the first on the birds of Saudi Arabia but now there are at least four blogs on the birds of the country, links to which can be found at the bottom of the website under My Middle East Blog List and all of which are adding to the knowledge of Saudi Arabian birds. |
| Top 10 Countries Visited |