Spring is here, and we have interesting visitors

Vernal equinox, marking the start of meteorological spring, doesn't arrive for two more days, but the temperature is expected to reach nearly 80 degrees in Chicago today, as it did yesterday, and it's time for me to admit it, whether or not it seems right that the trees are leafing and the forsythia are bursting forth a good three weeks earlier than usual.  Hence, we enter into the 2012 Spring Edition of Amusing Musings. The butterflies aren't here yet - at least I don't think so - but spring always heralds the arrival of interesting visitors, such as migrating birds, that we're just beginning to notice.

This blog gets an assortment of visitors too, besides my much-appreciated regular readers. That's why I use a sitemeter (click on the tiny badge to the left of the top of this post) to get a sense of who's nosing around. At least 80% of visitors are automated web sweepers of various kinds. Google shows up as having been here several times a day every day. That's so it knows what's here, should someone be searching on "polar bears of Churchill" or "Laguna Pueblo" or "Puerto Rico 1912" or "Norman Maclean" or "Norman Bradburn." Sitemeter  identified the following particularly intriguing source of a recent search: 

Click to enlarge for detail

I hope this means the White House is considering asking Mr. Bradburn to consult, or perhaps to be honored in some special way!
Sadly, sitemeter also sometimes yields unwelcome information, for example, that photos posted here are being used elsewhere without my knowledge, permission, or approval.  So from now on, with my apologies, those of my photos I know are most likely to attract attention ("dolphin mother and baby" is, believe it or not, by far the most common search term bringing people to Amusing Musings, and my photo of a polar bear cub being loaded into the hold of a helicopter has been lifted and published on someone else's blog, albeit with full credit to me) will be made un-stealable with DO NOT USE WITHOUT PERMISSION marring the image. It's a great shame we have to go that route.