Happy birding to you!

For the past few years, I have maintained three - count 'em, three! - blogs. This one devoted to birding, Gardening With Nature devoted to habitat gardening, and The Nature of Things, an eclectic blog devoted to... well, a little bit of everything. I have greatly enjoyed doing all three blogs but none more so than this one.

Backyard Birder was my first attempt at blogging. I started it for The Houston Chronicle in the spring of 2006, so it has been going continuously now for almost eight years. In the world of blogging, that is a very long time indeed.  

In August, 2011, after the Chronicle had changed its online format for reader blogs, I decided to post Backyard Birder on Blogger instead and I've been happily publishing here ever since. So, it has been particularly wrenching for me to make the decision to discontinue posting to this particular blog. I have reluctantly concluded that I simply do not have the time and energy - and maybe the ideas - to maintain three separate, though related, blogs.

Looking at the traffic on the three blogs, it is clear that The Nature of Things receives about twice as many visitors on average as the other two blogs combined. Consequently, my choice was made obvious. I will continue with The Nature of Things and in addition to all the other topics that I write about there, I will now be including birds and gardening. (I will also soon suspend writing Gardening With Nature.)

I want to thank those of you who have faithfully followed this blog over the years. It has been my great pleasure to share my enthusiasm for birds - especially our ordinary, everyday, overlooked backyard birds - with you. I invite you to follow me to The Nature of Things where my first post about the birds of my backyard will be appearing tomorrow. But whether you do or not and whatever else you do, keep watching those birds!

Happy birding to you all.