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Read previous years’ By the Numbers: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013

Top posts by views

Amusing bird names explained: Fluffy-backed Tit-babbler (2016)
Personal academic websites for faculty & grad students: the why, what, and how (2013)
Free project ideas in ecology & conservation (2020)
What’s in an affiliation? (2016)
Overseas field courses and equity, diversity & inclusion (2020)
How did we learn that birds migrate (and not to the moon)? A stab in the dark (2013)
The advantages of Google Scholar for early-career academics (2013)
Some thoughts on The University (2020)
On finding an error in my own published paper (2016)
Listing grants on one’s CV (2017)

I’m consistently surprised that 2013 opinions on how to build a website has been in the top 10 nearly (if not every) year.

 

18,250(ish)

The number of visitors. About the same as last year. I know that L&F has never been driven by traffic, but it feels increasingly like shouting into the void.

 

158

The number of countries those visitors came from (or at least their IP addresses mapped to). Shout out to the one person who visited from Togo, Mozambique, Guernsey, Turks & Caicos Islands, Barbados, Macau SAR China, Antigua & Barbuda, Cayman Islands, Solomon Islands, Maldives, Seychelles, Liechtenstein, Nicaragua, Bahamas, Gambia, Isle of Man, Liberia, St. Martin, Cameroon, Swaziland, Brunei, Bolivia, Rwanda, Jersey, Monaco, Kyrgyzstan, Eritrea, and St. Lucia!

 

0

The number of field trips this year. Thank you, pandemic.

 

Many

Papers coauthored this year. Most not as a result of my massive efforts but the perseverance of others. With the pandemic and museum shutdown, I think I did about 1 day of research between April and October. I definitely dropped the ball on a few as well.

 

505

The number of kms I ran this year. Given that I only started running a year ago, and had a major break in the summer, I’m pretty pleased. Highlights were a 4:47/km pace in April, and a half-marathon in November.

 

7246

The number of emails sent this year. Not counting Teams, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, Instagram DM, Twitter messages, and letters.

 

1

The number of people who found L&F by searching “what came first booby the bird or breasts”

 

1

Mental breakdowns this year. End of July. It was not fun. I’m on the way back up, though.

 

and lastly,

8

The number of years L&F has been around. From the heady days of 2013 science blogging to the metaphorical desert in which we now find things. There’s less of an appetite for longer science blogging by random people, and L&F has really shifted from a blog about science to a blog about HOW science happens, which is even more niche. Not that it’s all about the clicks, but with so little engagement it’s hard to see the relevance anymore. The Lab and Field will stay up, but don’t expect any more posts, or at least not with any regularity. Subscribe to the RSS feed (if that’s even still a thing), or get updates by email if you’re super keen. Thanks for joining me on the rollercoaster of the last 8 years.

-Alex