Cheers to 12 years of blogging on WordPress!!

When I started my first blog on WordPress in January 2012, my purpose was to give weekly updates for my friends and family from my two month journey as a Wildlife Volunteer in South Africa.

Since then followed a couple of more passive years, where I studied Biology at the university, with little money and time to travel abroad and blog about it.

How I continued to gain inspiration to keep blogging

But in 2015 (in the void between my Bachelor’s and Master’s) I traveled to Thailand to volunteer with rescued elephants. Before doing so, I decided to spend a couple of days ‘solo‘ in Bangkok to settle after the long journey from Copenhagen and to explore the foreign city and it’s culture.

Since my trip to Thailand and onward, I have been blogging consistently for nine years about my travels in Central America (Belize and Guatemala), southern Europe (Greece, Italy etc.), Australia, Kenya and several other places around the world. 

I decided to train to become a bird ringer here in Denmark, and I volunteered for many years in a nature reserve close to Copenhagen.

Improving existing content and acquiring new skills

At some point I figured that my lessons learned and experiences from abroad should be elaborated more and more, and I trained my SEO skills to increase traffic on my site. Since the blog is purely my hobby, I still want to keep it fun!

From little to none views 12 years ago, I’m now proud that in 2024 alone there has been more than 6,000 views on my blog! My statistics say that my visitors come from 105 different countries (from the US to Uganda!!) which I think is my most impressive statistics. My thanks to everyone who stops by for travel inspiration and my advice 🙂

Some posts have received more attention than others, and this year the biggest majority of visitors wants to read about camping in Cape Range National Park in Western Australia, one of the most remote places I have ever visited!

The second-most read post on Traveling Female Ornithologist this year is about the guided tour into an active breeding colony of the little penguins on Tasmania. It was a truly intimate experience to see the little penguins in their fragile habitat among human settlements.

I hope the future holds more guided wildlife tours for me!

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It is a journey for me to continue working on my blog

Since 2019, I have been working full time in consultancy as an ecologist, and I changed job again in 2023, which has been keeping me busy.

Despite working my now 9-5 office job, I still have the benefits of traveling because we have several weeks of paid vacation in Denmark – a huge privilege, which I am thankful for.

For the last years I have also worked on creating a book, that I hope will see daylight before the end of this fall (fingers 🤞🏼)

Future aspirations and dreams

I aspire to keep traveling to new and extraordinary places in this vast and fast-changing world that we live in. But I also can’t turn a blind eye to the impact I have on the climate when traveling. The trail of climate change is evident in our daily lives, also here in Europe. Animal species are disappearing at rates never seen before, and cities are sinking from the increasing sea levels and extreme weather events.

I am trying to be mindful of how I travel by traveling with trains and taking direct flights whenever possible. But challenges arise when one dreams of faraway nature adventures (say… the Galapagos!)

I hope that my blog content continues to be a relevant source of inspiration. I know the competition is tough out there, especially since the rise of traveling digital nomads, who accumulate so much more time abroad than I ever have (yes – I am a bit jealous)..

Traveling Female Ornithologist is a blog created entirely during my free time, and I aspire to keep writing about my travels as more time pass by. At the moment there is no sponsored content and no source of income, but maybe things will change as my site continues to grow!

Please leave me a comment on this post if you have any future travel suggestions for me 🙂 (PS – I love birds and tropical weather!)

Hope to see you again on my blog!

Cheers,
Rie

© All photos are my own unless stated and may not be used without permission.