The cooler breezes and golden transformation of the foliage is one of my favourite parts of living in Manitoba. A hiatus on the beach trips and ice cream weather, but a welcome to hot drinks and running through crunchy leaves. While it’s not the start of a new calendar year, I find myself often reflective in this time of year, perhaps because of the timing of a new academic year even if I’m not a student anymore. Sometimes I use the beginning of a new school year or a new job as a fresh start to improve in aspects such as my routine, personal well-being, and organization and clarity of my work (codes, notes, writing). Often I find myself immediately returning to my usual chicken scratches, postponing things I had wanted to stay on top of, and remaining perpetually tired. In short, I have continually struggled to get my stuff together, and in the past several months I feel like I’m actually starting to do so. Here I describe the projects I’ve been up to this summer, including my own self, and my hopes for the fall.

The primary component of my summer was working at the Assiniboine Park Conservancy, which was absolutely amazing! My job was filled with butterflies, birds, bears, and wonderful people. I primarily helped with rearing an endangered butterfly, the Poweshiek Skipperling, and monitored nest boxes and conducted polar bear observations with some of the bears at the zoo. The lifecycle from egg to larva to pupa to butterfly seems so simple, but it’s fascinating how a creature can go through all these transformations. And to see this all these steps in the Poweshiek Skipperling was a very special opportunity. One of Manitoba’s treasures, the Poweshiek Skipperling is important to the tall grass prairie habitat, and by rearing individuals in captivity and releasing them into the wild, we can work on increasing their population. As larvae, they camouflage really well with their preferred grass, sometimes we couldn’t find them in our weekly checks! And what I find especially incredible about these guys is that they stay in their habitat during the winter as larvae, under the snowpack (or in a controlled freezer for captive ones) until the next spring. Working with these tiny larvae and seeing them transform into butterflies (the cutest!) has invigorated my appreciation for the insect world. Similar to when I first started opening my eyes to the diversity of birds when I took an ornithology course, this job has grown my interest in learning the variety of species of butterflies and moths.

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During the summer, I also worked on finishing up manuscripts from my master’s project on purple martins. Juggling this with work was a big challenge. I would tell myself I’ll work on this when I get home, but then I end up being too tired and I push it to the next day, and the next… then to the weekend but unsuccessfully. A couple friends and I who wanted to get into better writing habits started a writing club to work on finishing manuscripts and other writing. We shared our goals every week, aimed for a writing hour in the morning (on our own schedule) and checked in with each other a the end of the week. My energy level in the evenings was hopeless and because of my work hours and time I wanted to reserve for walking Mocha in the morning, I decided to set my writing time to 5:30-6:30am. While this routine wasn’t flawless, I actually did end up getting my two manuscripts submitted by the end of August. Though I still have yet to hear from reviewers, I feel like I have finally accomplished the big looming part of this project that had generated so much stress this past year. I’m very grateful for this writing group – without them I probably would have dragged these manuscripts on even longer.

For the month of September, I have been working as a short-term field technician with the Avian Behaviour & Conservation lab with my master’s advisor to deploy new tracking tags on American Robins. This has been a wonderful experience, being outdoors and using mist-nets to catch birds and meeting new people. While we are targeting a specific species, we get a lot of by-catch (which we are releasing right away) and this has been extremely fun. Though I have prior mist-netting experience, I definitely feel myself improving a lot in this technique and more confident in bird extractions. Even caught a lifer bird for me- the Gray-cheeked Thrush! My favourite capture is the handsome Fox Sparrow, though not necessarily an uncommon species, it was a real treat to see one up so close. This upcoming week is my last week of bird field work, and then I’ll be fully into a new position doing bioinformatics on whale genomics, which I’m super stoked for!

While I still often find myself falling asleep on the couch to a show on netflix, I have been actively trying to do new things to improve some of my abilities (along with my brain function and mental health), and I’m finding this aspect of my life quite rewarding. Even something as simple as cutting my own hair for the first time. After buying some hair cutting scissors (and razor for Matt’s hair) and watching some quick video tutorials, I cut Matt’s hair and mine shortly after. The first cut was the most daunting, but now I don’t think either of us will bother with going to the barber shop anymore! I also learned a lot about car maintenance when my good friend John offered to look at my car to prepare us for the road trip to California that Matt and I planned for earlier this month (which we ended up cancelling due to the next sharp rise in covid cases). Timing couldn’t have gone better when my starter died and he helped me tremendously with not only fixing my car, but also teaching me important parts of car maintenance by letting me get my own hands dirty. While I wouldn’t be any expert, I’m looking to see what courses I could take to continue learning about car maintenance, especially since my car is getting old. For other new things, I learned a bit about house maintenance for the house I’m looking after (mowing the lawn, cleaning gutters, etc…), tried rock climbing for the first time, started to invest money, explored new areas in Manitoba, and also took care of plants. I have a horrible history with taking care of plants – even succulents – but this time it’s going successfully, with the help of Matt. I am very happy how my little crown of thorns plant has blossomed so well this summer (normally a plant under my care would have died by now!). I’ve also been working on detangling my childhood issues that have had an enormous impact on my life today, such as my insecurities, behaviours, or damaging patterns. I’m not ready to publicly go in depth there, but I’ll just say that I feel more empowered now that I’ve started to take an initiative to work on some of my issues. I’ll conclude on the note that towards the end of this summer, Matt generously gifted me his old camera that I requested for my birthday, which has encouraged me to up my game in bird photography. I’ve been a stickler for point and shoot cameras, but now I’m learning about getting fancy with interchangeable lenses, and while I still find my panasonic powershot more versatile, I have greatly enjoyed the higher quality in photos with my new camera. 🙂

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And of course it’s been fun to take photos of my reliable muses:

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It was a busy summer, and I hope to continue this fall with progressing in my adulthood and trying new things, along with revisiting some old hobbies.
-Evelien