Mission Scarlet
I traveled to Belize to meet the Scarlet Six, now known as the Belize Bird Conservancy, a group of men who sleep under the trees in which Scarlet Macaws nest in order to protect the nestlings from poaching. They will stay out there for five months during the breeding seasons until every last macaw has fledged or been brought to a captive-rearing facility.
Beyond the Coca Curtain: Can Birding Build an Economic Base in Colombia?
My first feature for Audubon magazine. I spent 15 days in Colombia covering Audubon's attempts to bring sustainable conservation and meaningful economic development to a country that has more bird species than any other on the planet.
News and Explainers
BeerSci: What's The Connection Between Hops And Marijuana?
Explainer on a question for the ages. Part of a series of service journalism and explainers on brewing science for Popular Science.
The Feminist Bird Club Wants to Make Birding Accessible to LGBTQ People of Color
Op-ed for Teen Vogue discussing what it takes to build inclusive birding spaces.
Proposed Wyoming Bill Allowing Sage-Grouse Captive Rearing Is Deeply Flawed
News story for Audubon covering a now-passed bill in the Wyoming legislature that makes it legal to captive-breed sage-grouse, despite the fact that the science shows that this is nearly impossible and will probably harm the bird.
Case History: The Long and Torturous Tale of How a Style Guide Came To Be
I ended up on the losing side of the argument whether or not Audubon and Audubon.org would adopt AOU capitalization rules for bird names, flouting decades of copyediting wisdom and my own feelings that caps are fussy and unnecessary.
Editing
Hail Mary
Mark Jannot and I collaborated on this cover story on the last-ditch, possibly-doomed efforts to save the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow from extinction. In response, an enraged subscriber ripped this cover off their copy of the magazine, wrote in Sharpie "THIS IS THE WORST MAGAZINE COVER EVER!!!" and mailed it back to us. All things considered, I think the cover did its job well.
Our Body the Ecosystem
Virginia Hughes brought forth a compelling story behind an incredibly arcane branch of science: studying the different populations of bacteria that live on each human body. This was first time in years that we'd used fine-art (rather than photojournalistic) photography to illustrate a story.
Mining for Dark Matter
Brooke Borel traveled to an abandoned mine in South Dakota to meet the scientists who are scouring the universe for signs of dark matter, the mysterious mass that explains some of the weirder behaviors of stars and galaxies.
Explainers
News
In Chicago, Controlled Fires Are Helping to Restore Crucial Bird Habitat
News story where writer Susan Cosier traveled to the southside of Chicago to see how flames could bring back a derelict wetland
Pulses of Water Bring Life to the Famished Colorado River
Explainer on the preliminary results of a "pulse-flow" of water through the parched Colorado River delta in Mexico.
Tracking Kestrels One Feather at a Time
News story on the efforts to track American Kestrels, not with bands, but via the DNA found in molted feathers.
Data Visualization and One-pagers
Please go here to see a gallery of visual narratives that I’ve commissioned and edited.