Category: This blog and its milestones

January was a good month for this blog – over 20,000 unique users and close to 85,000 page views. That would have made it either the second or third most-read month of 2017 (after July and August – always good months running up to the grouse shooting season). Thank you to all readers, cartoonists, Guest…

Some time over the last few days this blog passed 4 million page views since it sprang into life in April 2011. In fact it must have been passed quite a while ago, but there was a period of nearly two months in early 2015 when no visits were recorded by the software so that’s…

Hazel Peters is the winner of the Under-18 category of this blog’s writing competition. Hazel’s father, Keith, tells me that Hazel began showing her passion for nature, particularly birds, at around 7 years; recording what she saw, researching as much as she could and saving pocket money for binoculars.  If she’s not at school, she’s…

Just a reminder that the deadline for this blog’s writing competition is midnight on Saturday. I haven’t read any of the entries so far so I cannot even hint at the quality of the 18 entries. I can say that of the four categories, one currently has just a single entry whereas another already has…

              My poll for the best and worst Defra Secretary of State closes at 6pm so if you haven’t voted yet you need to get a move on! Click here.  

For the first month ever, this blog received over 100,000 page views (103,727) – previous best was August 2014 (88,787 page views: and two previous months with over 80,000 (July 2014 and May 2015). It also recorded the second highest number of unique visitors through the month – 21,687 (cf 22,238 in June 2014). This…

Behind the Binoculars is published today!       The winning entry in the competition for a signed copy of Behind the Binoculars was Stuart Benn – the very first entry. He (only) got seven out of 20 correct. These were the quotes he successfully identified, the others are, kind of obviously, in the book:…