This is my 50th post on Reason and Nature, which seemed an appropriate occasion to provide a recap of prior posts, summarize a few statistics, and ponder the future.
My rationale for starting this blog was that while exploring I would sometimes see interesting natural history phenomena – and I felt compelled to share these. I am not on social media and such phenomena often didn’t rise to the level of meriting a ‘natural history note’ in the peer reviewed scientific literature. Instead, a blog felt like an appropriate venue. The inaugural post, on June 4th 2021, was titled ‘Water snakes galore in the Everglades’. The general formula for many of my posts is to describe something I saw in nature and photographed, and then set it in a broader evolutionary context or provide some relevant background information. As the blog developed, I got more serious about wildlife photography and this began taking on a larger role. Today, the three prominent themes are Natural history, Evolutionary biology, and Wildlife photography.
The site has experienced modest growth in terms of views over the years – which is nice given that I haven’t advertised the blog at all and am not on social media. Besides a handful of people who I told about the blog, any growth has been entirely organic (mainly people finding the blog through search engines). This site is built with WordPress, which keeps track of various statistics that I thought I’d summarize.
Locations of viewers
Top ten countries in terms of views. Unsurprisingly, the top 3 are English-speaking.
Locations of viewers depicted on a world map. The site has had at least one viewer from 152 different countries (depicted in blue). There are about 20 countries in Africa from which I haven’t had any views (depicted in light gray). Outside Africa, countries that lack any viewers include Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cuba, French Guiana, Greenland, Iran, Kyrgystan, North Korea, Tajikistan, and Yemen. It may be difficult to get viewers from some of the above-mentioned countries as the internet, and even access to the site, may be restricted.
Top ten U.S. states in terms of views. There have been viewers from all 50 states. Unsurprisingly, given that Florida wildlife is a prominent topic in many posts, Florida has had the most viewers.
Most viewed posts
Top ten most viewed posts. This list doesn’t exactly fit what I would have expected. My top ten favorite posts (and those I might have expected to get the most views) are weighted toward those that took a lot of time and effort to produce or that I think are somewhat novel. This is exemplified by the post ‘Life and death on the Florida prairie’, which entailed visiting the same state park for 17 consecutive evenings and documenting (with 1000s of photos and 100s of videos) a natural fish die off and subsequent feast by alligators and birds.
My top 10 favorite posts (followed by actual rank in terms of views)
- Life and death on the Florida prairie (30th)
- World animal coins (12th)
- Alligator diet observations (25th)
- Caterpillars mimicking snakes (2nd)
- On the origin of Florida’s introduced species (21st)
- Microhabitat use in Costa Rican poeciliid fishes (with fieldwork photos) (15th)
- Rescuing a Florida softshell turtle from an abandoned swimming pool (26th)
- Lure-fishing animals (32nd)
- Alligators and crocodiles in South Florida (1st)
- Water snakes galore in the Everglades (40th)
If you haven’t already, you may want to check out some of the above posts.
How are viewers finding site
The vast majority of traffic comes via Google Search. This is followed by Facebook. Interestingly, some traffic has come from ChatGPT. This indicates that this site is being used as a source by AI. It will be interesting to see if this proportion grows in the future as AI comes to play a bigger role both in terms of internet search and information synthesis.
Types of devices
For me, probably the most surprising thing is that 69% of visitors view Reason and Nature on their mobile phones. Personally, I prefer to read articles on my desktop computer. Furthermore, I make and view the layout of posts on my desktop computer, and naively had in mind that this is how the majority of people would see them. But clearly that is not the case, as most are viewing posts on the (very) small screen.
Finally, Google Chrome and Safari dominate in terms of internet browsers used by site visitors and visitors use a variety of operating systems.
What does the future hold for Reason and Nature? I tend to make posts whenever I feel I have something to write about, and am motivated to do so. Sometimes this can be frequently and other times there are larger gaps between posts. This schedule suits me, and is how I plan to continue. One topic I may focus on more heavily in the future is underwater photography. There are many amazing photographers of terrestrial wildlife, but underwater photographers are, by comparison, much rarer. Furthermore, ocean life seems to be the predominate subject matter of many underwater photographers. I live in a region that has many freshwater springs with clear water and abundant wildlife, and I am in the process of upgrading my underwater photography gear.
Finally, thank you for reading this blog. If you are interested in subscribing you can click on the ‘Menu’ button in the upper right corner of this page and then type your email address into the box and click subscribe. You will then get an automatic email whenever I make a new post.
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