Sunday, March 4, 2018

Look Back at February & Where I've been


Hey all! I hope you area all enjoying your winter or spring. Which ever you are having. Sorry it's been a while if you are only following me via the blog. That's a long story which I'll elaborate on in a minute. 

First a look back at what the snow looked like around here in the middle of last month.


Then, after a very low snow year for most of the winter so far, it finally started to add up. Now it's looking more like a normal winter around my place. 



I've also spent a good bit of time out trying to capture some good wildlife photos. 


And I think I managed to get some. Like this beautiful mother and baby bighorn sheep in front of Sheep Mountain.


Or this pair of pregnant elk sparing over some kind of disagreement. They stayed balance on their hind legs for a long time. I'd never seen that before!


And then some little birdies came by for two days (and I've not seen them since) that I'd never seen before. After getting some photos, I looked them up and learned this is a Pine Grosbeak. 


Tracked down a few mountain goats. 


Check out the amazing color detail in those feathers!


I went on some hikes and snowshoes with Grizzly.


Isn't she just a gorgeous dog?



So other than all that, I haven't blogged much because I've been spending a lot of time working on videos. I feel a bit torn about that because I don't much like watching videos. I'd rather read personally. But on the other hand, I started this blog to share useful information with others. And, when I look at the amount of people I can get information too, Youtube wins hands down. Like in all the years I've been blogging, a little under 800,000 views on the blog. Now admittedly, that is a pretty huge number. And way more than I ever dreamed would be interested when I started this. 

But... when I compare that to what I see on Youtube (mostly in the last six months whereas the blog's been going for years) it's a huge difference. Videos have somehow racked up over 2,000,000 (yeah, two million) views with over 11,000,000 minutes watched. Now talk about numbers that blow me away! I thought there might be a few hundred folks interested when I started this. So that's just crazy!  

If there were unlimited hours in a day, I'd just do both. But somehow, I only have 24 of them in each day. So... do I put more of my time into the thing I prefer personally? Or the thing that reaches the most people? I don't know the answer. For now, I'm trying to do both as I am able, but I've certainly put more time into video than blogging recently. 

Meaning, if you've been following me on here, and don't want to miss anything, please know there is also stuff (as in info, updates, wildlife, etc) to be found on my Youtube channel! https://www.youtube.com/fynyth 

That's all for now, and I promise I'll try to get blog posts back up a bit more frequently. 








8 comments:

  1. Gorgeous photos, especially those of Grizzly! I prefer reading to watching but do also enjoy your YouTube channel, so I'm glad you do both :-)

    Claudia

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ariel, where do you go to look up bird species? I have seen so many different types and colors traveling around WY, MT, and ID.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Usually when it's something where I have no idea at all like this one, it starts with doing a Google image search for "song bird rocky mountains red." Or something similar. Then browsing the photos till I see something that looks like what I saw. Then going to that site and seeing what they say it is. If that photo says "Pine Grosbeak," then I go back and google that name, and see if pretty much all the photos now match what I saw/photographed. Sometimes I have to try a few different descriptions before finding a match.

      Delete
  3. I prefer to read too! I wonder if your readership is higher than you think. I use a blog reader on my phone and for some blogs, including yours, I'm able to read the whole entry without going to your actual website. It just occurred to me that when I do that my "visit" doesn't get logged because I am not actually going to your website. Some blogs I read only show a part of an entry so I am forced to go to the website. Maybe that is a change you can make?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nice! You might be right and those views probably don't show up, but with only a little over 200 people subscribed to emails like you are, at the most, that's a couple hundred extra blog readers, compared to nearing 16,000 subscribers to video. Sigh. I think we readers are just becoming an almost extinct breed.

      Delete
  4. I wonder if your readership is higher than you think. I use a blog reader on my phone and for some blogs. Mark Hutchinson is a very experience man which is working in wild life field from many years.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank You for sharing your article, This is an interesting & informative blog. It is very useful for the developer like me.

    หนังออนไลน์

    ReplyDelete
  6. I prefer reading too! Videos take up too much time. That being said, you have a good amount of print information here and I am find it useful in researching my tiny dreams. I used to work in Yellowstone, love the wildlife!

    ReplyDelete