Field Notes: July 2026
2026 July 30
You can find the original newsletter here.
Life Updates
Fairly hectic and busy month, I was preparing for a conference for the past few weeks and just returned last night from it! I gave a talk, and it was the first time I've given an actual research talk to an audience in a few years. But people kept coming up to me throughout the entire conference to say it was one of their favorites and was really inspiring. Which meant a lot to me, because I've felt really rusty and out of the game after making some big professional pivots the past few years.
I do have to add the conference was in Orlando, but it was in possibly the most commercialized, endlessly-parking-lot-filled part of the city we could possibly be in, near the theme parks. So the only new bird I saw was cattle egrets hanging out on the airport runway, the rest were mockingbirds and crows. I felt very cheated out of Floridian birds especially after talking to some scientists who work in the Everglades. Snail kite, limpkin, white ibis... wait for me... one day...
There were anoles though, which was fascinating as I live too far north to see any lizards other than my own pet leopard gecko. I was so nature-deprived I saw an anole skittering around on the ground from a second floor balcony, and stopped mid-conversation to be like "we have to go downstairs and see that lizard, NOW".
Ironically, right before I left for this conference, I did see a vagrant Wood Stork nearby, so I guess I've technically seen two Floridian birds this summer one way or another...
I also worked at a bird-themed event with the natural history museum I volunteer with. There were lots of extinct specimens on display, which was awesome that people could come and see them. Our museum still doesn't have a building (bureaucracy moment because they're busy funding sports lol) so we do educational "pop-ups" like this where we fill a space with all of our cool specimens just for one day, and then take them down.
A very science-ful month I suppose, which will continue as I have one (1) more conference locally to go to in a few days. This has been a crazy year for conferences, but I guess I haven't been to any in several years. Making up for lost time...?
Creative Updates
Happy Art Fight to those who celebrate! I got to experiment a little after not drawing for a few months and I'm happy with what I've made. Here's two in particular I'm really proud of:
A lot of "bird symbolism with purple shading on multiply layer" this year but that's okay. I wish I could have drawn more, but it was pretty busy especially towards the end... it also felt like a fairly quiet year overall, maybe because the site now has over a MILLION people on it all spread out now! Wow!
I have plans to continue poking at my personal site once the month ends! Most excitedly, through working on a professional site for work stuff I've discovered it's fairly cheap and easy to have a custom domain (the one I have for work stuff is <$1/mo). I'm pondering some really fun custom domains... the .zone TLD is quite fun, a bit more expensive to upkeep after the first year but not terrible. I have some ideas in mind but we'll see if I commit.
I spend a lot of time trying to find a username and name that "fits" because I don't feel as connected to the username (etourvol) I've used for over a decade now. I have a scattering of names I've been feeling out, but then it's kind of awkward to comment on an artists' livestream or a drawing like... does this person even recognize me now?! So it'd be nice to just commit and go in on something and keep it constant.
Some other site plans include making a casual recipe "sticky note" wall, mostly because I keep forgetting what temperature to set my air fryer to for various regular recipes I make. I also have plans for updating the layout, though this may take longer. I started with a sleek minimalist layout to not get overwhelmed, but I think I'd like to start getting a bit more personalized with it!
As a side project, I did overhaul and code my professional site from scratch in advance of some of these conferences (though, I'm not sure who looks at that sort of thing). I used a Bootstrap CSS framework just to make formatting a bit simpler, which was actually quite easy to "install" (just two lines of code). That took some time to do this month, but I'm happy to have made it from scratch so I can get granular and annoying about formatting. I was using a WYSIWYG site builder before, and it was a few years out of date. Plus, kind of a fun personal touch to say hey, this whole site is scratch-made! It does feel like people value that less now in professional circles because you can now ask AI to spit out a layout for you, but maybe the right people will appreciate it, I don't know.
I also helped to paint a biodiversity-themed mural! I must stress I was not the primary artist on this project who made this beautiful mural possible, but there was a community event to put down the flat colors (kind of like a "paint-by-number"). Here's a small section I got a picture of, I helped put down the colors behind the fairy shrimp and in the leaves.
I never know if these newsletters are too long, so congratulations if you've made it to the end and I hope you are enjoying and doing well. I love to write these and look back on them (it's a nice way to reflect on the nice things that happen each month, when things often feel negative in day-to-day).