6,000 views on Flickr.

I posted this photo of a Cactus Wren in my last post.  (By the way, the clarity of the photo in this blog does not seem to be as good as what it is on Flickr.)  On the same day I posted the photo to my Flickr site.  Little did I know at that time that this photo would become my all-time most popular photo on my Flickr site.  In the 72 hours since posting the photo I have had just over 6,000 views and 152 Fav's.  Dana and I keep looking at the photo to try and figure out why it has become so popular.  Maybe you can tell us......?

Let me explain what Flickr is.  Flickr is a photo sharing/storage site run by Yahoo.  Worldwide there are tens of thousands of registered Flickr members.  Whenever you post a photo to your page it automatically gets posted to the general Flickr site and can be seen by everyone viewing Flickr.  Within Flickr there are sub-sites created by individuals or groups.  Most of these sub-sites are for specific types of photography.   There are thousands of sub-sites.  When you view a photo you trigger a count for the number of views.  If you like the photo you can indicated so by clicking a "like" icon similar to some of the social networks.  This is Flickr 101.

Back to the Cactus Wren photo.  I posted the photo to my page and I also added it to 3 or 4 "Bird" sights.  Ones that I usually post to.  6,000 people from many countries around the world viewed the photo and of those 6,000, 152 "Fav'd" it.  One of the features of Flickr is that the Flickr program notifies you when someone "Fav's" a photo.  We had a lot of email over the weekend....

Here is an update on the origin of the Rosy-faced Lovebirds.  

My friend Bud came through once again and put me straight on the origin of these feral birds.  They did not arrive in Florida after all.  Here is an excerpt from the "Arizona Field Ornithologists" website:

"As a consequence of their popularity and ease of captive breeding, local escapees and illegal releases from breeders and owners are likely the initial source of a widespread and conspicuous feral lovebird population now found in the greater Phoenix area. The Rosy-faced Lovebird population in Phoenix is the only known feral population in the United States.  ...  The Rosy-faced Lovebird was first reported as breeding in the greater Phoenix area in a residential neighborhood in the East Valley near the Apache Junction and Mesa city border in 1987."

And that, as they say in the biz, it that!