Lots of Visitors

I had no idea how many people looked at this blog until someone suggested I put a counter on it. I haven't used counters on my sites for a few years, because I found them unreliable. They overcount when someone, usually me editing, is repeatedly refreshing the page. And they undercount when someone on a big system, like Worcestershire County Council who have thousands of computers, looks at a page which is held in a cache. That's a piece of disc space that holds a copy of my page so that the County's computer doesn't keep having to download it from the Internet.

Anyway, I put one on this site and as you can see, about 70 a month are looking in. Including me about 8 times, I think, but excluding the multitudes avidly reading the site in County libraries and the corridors of power!

Some of you may not know that you can use computers free at any public library in the county, and most others in England and Wales. After all, you are reading this on your own computer, probably. Well, it's good to send an email home when you are not there, even one to yourself when you've got a file or digital photo from somewhere. Also, you can get lots of stuff for free that you would have to pay for at home, notably Ancestry.com, that great collection of family history information.

You can still borrow books from there too.

Wildlife Update April

Duncan Sutcliffe has sent me the list of birds and other creatures spotted in and around Fort Royal Park in April 2007. A good list this month, because of the extra activity of the nesting birds, the extra care of the wildlife watchers and the large numbers of visitors swelling the popularity of the park.
Bat
Blackbird
Blue Tit
Coal Tit
Crow
Dunnock
Feral Pigeon
Goldfinch
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Great Tit
Greenfinch
Herring Gull
House Sparrow
Magpie
Mute Swan
Robin
Song Thrush
Starling
Wood Pigeon
Wren

For a change, the pictures are taken by me in Fort Royal Park. The bird is a carrion crow: I think there are only two inhabiting the park, though a flock of rooks comes through occasionally, and I have seen jackdaws there in the past, but not recently. I don't know anything about insects so it isn't on the list: I photographed this one to show how good my camera is at closeups, and because it kept still better than the birds. It was on one of the bottle banks, which explains the odd background.
Finally an appeal. I haven't got a good picture of it yet, but there is a sparrow-like bird that has been around all year in Upper Park Street, particularly active around 9 in the morning this time of year. It has white underwings which show on its tail when resting and are very noticeable in flight. It always flocks with the sparrows. Do sparrows have mutations like this? You don't need binoculars to see it, and I'm sure the residents, including me, won't appreciate them either!