Anya: Hello and welcome to Red Penned: a podcast on writing across the disciplines! I’m your host Anya Ricketson, a third-year English major at UGA. This season is called Intro, Body, Conclusion and I’ll be focusing on writing assignments. In this episode, I’ll be talking to Josiah Lavender.
Josiah: So, my name is Josiah Lavender. I am a fourth-year ecology major at UGA. I’ve been interested in birds and wildlife and nature since I was really really little and I decided to study ecology in college because it fits with my interests.
Anya: Because of his lifelong interest in Ecology, during the beginning of the pandemic, Josiah wrote an article for the Oconee Rivers Audubon Society newsletter. The Audubon Society is an international conservation society that protects birds and their habitat.
Josiah: So I actually a year and a half ago joined the board as the co-vice-president of the local Audubon Society which is Oconee Rivers Audubon. And kind of our mission is to preserve and fund wildlife conservation. So, anything that has to do with outreach or wildlife conservation in the area. So that could be like giving talks for the general public to learn about like different topics and issues, or it could be leading bird walks and things like that, or it could be like funding projects or like right now we’re funding a boy scout project for chimney swift nests in the area.
Anya: Much of Josiah’s work with the Audubon Society focuses on the public.
Josiah: Finding ways to engage the general public, people who are already kind of interested in birds or nature, and this kind of gets at the general gist of what national Audubon is about as well, so that’s kind of the overarching society. So these small chapters are basically ways of kind of getting to the local community and bringing people together on these topics and kind of explaining the plight that wildlife and nature is in at the moment and how we can make an impact for good.
Anya: Here is how Josiah explained the topic of the article he wrote, which is titled, “A Break in The Doldrums.”
Josiah: This article was for The Oconee Rivers Audubon Newsletter, and that actually has been discontinued since then. This was back in 2020 and it was about wading bird post-breeding dispersal. So basically a phenomenon that occurs in late summer which is the time that most birders are really really bored…
Anya: As a quick note to the uninitiated, the word birders refers to people who have a passion for bird watching. Anyone from a backyard bird enthusiast to someone who goes on overseas expeditions to find different kinds of birds might refer to themselves as a birder.
Josiah: because it’s hot outside, it’s not fun to be out, and most of the birds in the area are breeding or they’re just kind of staying in one place, and so theres not much opportunity to see something really unusual. And so this was kind of me trying to get at this idea that there are always interesting things going on but birders don’t… kind of aren’t always inclined to notice those things. So there’s fascinating activities that birds are up to even in the late summer that we can go out and observe and be interested in.
Anya: This is not the first time Josiah has written an article like this one. For almost as long as he has been a birder, Josiah has been writing and speaking about birds and nature.
Josiah: So I’ve done a couple others more for like magazine or newsletter type articles as well. So I attended some birding camps out west in high school and I wrote like these summaries of what that was like for people, maybe kids that were interested in doing that in future. And I did, when I was really little I think I was like eleven, I wrote an article about vultures for like a kids wildlife magazine. I really enjoy like that kind of communication to a broader audience and finding ways to kind of relay information in a way that’s palatable and like interesting to people I find really fun.
Anya: The experience Josiah has in writing this type of paper means that he has a set way of beginning, and a mindset about how to address his intended audience through his whole writing.
Josiah: So, oftentimes I’ll just like start writing, and I think communicating these sort of things in a way people can understand comes fairly naturally to me, and so I’ll just kind of start writing. And one of the big things I think about is like, “Is the language I’m using…” I kind of try to put myself in the shoes of the reader who may not have very much experience with the topic at all and I say, “well like would this be accessible if I was reading this? Would it make any sense? Would I kind of be able to put the pieces together?” Because I think oftentimes we’ll try and communicate things and it makes sense in our heads but the reader is just kind of lost, like all those things just aren’t fitting together for the reader. And so I think kind of taking a step back and asking yourself like, in this case with kinda communicating scientific topics it’s okay to kind of assume that the reader doesn’t know very much. I think that’s a good thing. That may not be the case for like all sorts of writing but I think in this case… yeah just sort of thinking about, “is the language I’m using going to… like are these words that someone is going to understand?” In this case with this article I’m like introducing different bird species, so I’m like thinking about, people may not have a framework for like even, “ what is a wading bird?” for example. So that’s kind of like the main topic of this article is about wading birds. So mankind sure that like I have this balance where I’m not kind of explaining things that are just really really elementary that might lose readers who are more experienced, but also not making it kind of so in depth that the general public can’t access it.
Anya: I was curious about how Josiah came up with the title of his article, which is “A Break in The Doldrums,” and whether he wrote it before or after the rest of the paper.
Josiah: I think… I’m trying to remember back now but I think I wrote it at the end. This is actually the approach that I take with most of these articles, if I write one that is like I’m not sure how to title it at the beginning, and sometimes when I’m starting the writing I’m not even sure what direction I’m going in. And so I’ll just wait til the end and find something that’s a good summary of what I talked about. So again the “doldrums,” are this time in the summer when it seems like theres really not much happening in the bird world and it’s hot and buggy and no one wants to be outside. And I thought kind of this phenomenon of post-breeding dispersal where these young birds are kind of leaving their breeding grounds and coming further north before they head back south in the fall would be kind of a good thing to highlight as like, “the doldrums are not necessarily the doldrums. They’re kind of the doldrums if we choose to see them that way.” And I think that most of the people who are reading the newsletter are gonna kind of know what the summer doldrums are or they’re gonna be like, “what is this? How do doldrums have to do with birds?” And it might be kind of an engaging thing for them to prompt them to read the article.
Anya: Another thing that might draw readers into his article is his introduction, which serves as an overview for the rest of his paper, explaining the summer doldrums, what post breeding dispersal is, and what birds can be seen during this time.
Josiah: So I think because this article is about like a particular topic in ornithology, which is the study of birds, I felt that it was a good idea to kind of give a broad overview for what I was gonna be talking about and kind of like set the time and place like, “Where does this occur? What months does it occur in? How does this relate to bird species that we see here in Georgia?” Kind of put it in this framework so then I could go into like specifically how… like the rest of the article is about like how we can observe this at a local reserve. And so I felt that that would be a good way to kind of introduce this topic that not many people would be familiar with.
Anya: Each of the body paragraphs in the article gives very specific detail on a different kind of bird. I wanted to know what kind of research Josiah did leading up to writing this to be able to speak so surely about each one.
Josiah: So the location that I’m describing in this article is somewhere that I had birded since I was thirteen or fourteen and so I was familiar with the seasonal fluctuations and what bird species to expect to see there at different times of the year, how many of each there were and these are all species that breed here in Georgia and so since I starting birding when I was eleven they had become really familiar species to me. So most of that is based off of my own knowledge but also there is this really cool website called EBird, it’s called Ebird.org and users of EBird can submit their observations of birds. So you don’t really have to be a scientist and it’s kind of a way of contributing your observations to science worldwide. And you can actually go on there and access all of this data and so I would do that for some of these species to kind of make sure that my ideas for when these bird were occurring or most abundant were actually accurate representations. So kind of comparing my own observations and my own experience to what other people had observed and reported. And so then just kind of like going into detail about each species, because I think there is so much that is unique about any given species in the bird world and thats why we see so much diversity. And so I felt that it was important to go into kind of the life history and natural history behind each of these species as well.
Anya: Each body paragraph is accompanied by a photo of the bird that is discussed in it.
Josiah: First of all actually when I took them I did not know that I would be using them for the article. This particular spot has kind of, it’s basically a wide open marshy lake with a lot of vegetation around the edge that kind of allows you to kind of be behind bushes or trees while also observing these birds up close and so it’s a great spot for photography. So I had kind of just spent hours there just in the previous summers just taking photos of birds and it was convenient because I could use them for the article. So most of these photos are actually taken at the location which I thought was kind of important for the reader to kind of know, “these are birds that I can actually go and see if I visit this place.” And then it’s also important I think that there is just that visual representation for people who, like some of these birds are probably going to be familiar to every reader, just because they are really common in Georgia, but some of them may not be and so having that visual of what birds you can expect to see there and having photos may just add to like, “this is like a really compelling phenomenon for us to go out and actually observe.” Again birders are kind of, I don’t want to say like reclusive but they tend to be uninterested in bird watching during those months of July and August and so I was hoping to get people excited about going out and maybe visiting this location or other similar locations and seeing those birds.
Anya: These photos contribute to the actionability of the article, if birders can see the birds in photos, they can go see them in real life. The conclusion of the article expands the view of the body paragraphs and the introduction.
Josiah: The main kind of group of birds that I’m talking about is the wading birds and so those are the ones that most consistently display this behavior of post-breeding dispersal. But other species like raptors for example, which includes like hawks and kites and falcons and things like that, these are birds that most people even people that are familiar with this concept of post-breeding dispersal may not know that they actually exhibit it. And so I wanted to kind of highlight that there are some other really unique species, like the swallow tailed kite for example which is this beautiful incredibly like buoyant bird in flight and they have this long black forked tail and they’re just gorgeous and I felt that most people reading this article may not even know that you could see them in the area. So I wanted to kind of connect that in and they also so post-breeding dispersal so we see a lot more in the late summer months of July and August. And then talking about a few other locations that kind of just people who maybe aren’t willing to travel as far or maybe people who live closer to some of those other areas can observe those birds there as well. Maybe some people who are reading are not going to be as interested as I am in kind of the natural history of these birds but they just want to like go see them and so how you can do that easily was kind of my main goal.
Anya: Stay tuned after the break to hear about what influences contributed to Josiah’s writing style, and how science communication like this article is helping protect nature everywhere.
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Anya: I always like to ask my guests who are not in fields that you would generally think of as writing fields how they feel about writing in general.
Josiah: I actually don’t like writing generally. I like kind of attempting creative writing for example, I kind of have these story ideas in my head and sometimes attempt those and I’ve never kind of successfully completed one. But if it’s anything that I’m interested about or with a story that I kind of feel inspired to tell then I love to write. And I think for me it’s just the, like I feel the drudgery when I’m kind of forced to write about something. So if it is anything about birds I will almost always gladly write and I think I always learn often just through like background research I will learn more information and then even some of the information that I already do know, writing kind of forces me to think through it and often times I don’t really know what I think or even know about a topic until I start writing about it. And then it identifies all these gaps like all these questions come up and I end up learning a lot more, so I love that whole process as well. I mean I think that with this particular article just kind of condensing all these kind of bits of information and observations that I had picked up from being a birder and from kind of like consistently observing this location and areas around my home town of Watkinsville, Georgia, just kind of putting those things together allows me to just be a better communicator in general especially if I’m leading trips or something like that. Once I’ve written about a topic I have new information and new ways of telling people about it.
Anya: The things that have influenced Josiah’s writing make it clear why he feels this way.
Josiah: So my writing style has actually been influenced by my father a lot because he was a journalist for many years and a very very good writer. And so he kind of taught me how to write and I would say as a result of his teaching I try to be as concise as possible which I know is kind of a general writing rule. But also not using fancy terminology where I don’t need to use it. I find that like that is kind of a… I don’t know, I’ve noticed that oftentimes people will try to use words to sound good, but they don’t always convey exactly what you want to convey. And so especially with articles like this where you’re actually talking to an audience that’s gonna read, it’s not for school or just, it’s like actually several people are going to read this kind of trying to use words that are as simple as possible to convey what I’m saying. And then I think finding creative and compelling ways of telling the story, I wouldn’t say like looking back at this that I did a great job of that but that is one of my goals in writing is to find like beautiful ways of capturing the readers imagination. And that could be adding photos to the article or it could be through highlighting just particularly amazing things about the animal that I’m writing about or the bird that I’m writing about. And so I think I just try and adapt that particular style to what article I’m writing.
Anya: On a broader scale, Josiah also believes that his article and articles like it are incredibly important.
Josiah: I think these types of articles are important because there is usually, with birding for example there is a relatively small fraction of people that are interested in the hobby and that know a lot about it, and there are people that are maybe interested in it that don’t know as much about it, and there are people that could kind of this might be a window into a world that they’ve never even thought about. So I think with any niche topic like this writing is so important because it’s a method of informing, and I know we talked about this some already but informing the general public about a particular topic, and it kind of gives you like a window into that world. Like some people might look at the birding world and be like, “Why do people even watch birds?” And so writing can be a way of like them learning why people watch birds, why it’s interesting, why we should care about birds and other wildlife. So I think communication, sort of science communication is extremely important in general and will be important for me because most of the formats that scientific information is in right now are not accessible to the general public, to people who don’t have training, even in my particular field I mean a physicist may have published many papers in his or her career but if they read a paper about ornithology they may not be able to understand it because it’s just a vastly different field with different terminology. So you know most of that scientific information is stored in academic journals and finding a way to communicate that information to a broader audience is something I want to get better at because I think that a lot of scientists aren’t very good at it and they can’t really be expected to be good at it because they’ve never had any formal training in it. And I think that’s something that like universities do a really bad job of. Like I’m finishing up my degree in ecology and like no one’s ever taught me how to like communicate science to the public. And yet it’s important for like in my particular field oftentimes the public plays a big role in conservation for example, I mean one huge example of course would be climate change, like that’s something that everyone can make a positive impact for and conservation for example like sometimes the public will be donating to organizations that are funding research or conservation management that’s going to ultimately create a better planet for everyone. And so if you can’t find a way to get important information about nature to people a lot of people will just be in the dark and you’re going to miss out on a lot of opportunities to have people help you in those endeavors.
Anya: As always, for my final question, I asked for Josiah’s advice for anyone writing an article like this one for the very first time.
Josiah: Think about what audience is going to be reading your article because it’s going to vary, even in this broader category of kind of like scientific communication, the audience is going to vary. It could be, you might be talking to a lot of people who are scientists already and so you can kind of get away with being a little bit more detailed but I think that most of the time you’re going to be talking to an audience that’s a big combination of people who maybe have some scientific training and people who don’t know the first think about the topic that you’re talking about. So I think that finding, the first thing is to like think about how you’re going to find a balance between talking in a way that truthfully and clearly conveys the information but not in a way that’s going to be lost on people who don’t know about that topic already. I think another thing is to just kind of brainstorm thoughts so one thing I really like to do is if I kind of know what I want to write about but I don’t know how to start or what direction to go in I write out a bunch of different directions I go a bunch of different ways that I can approach it. And then oftentimes I’ll start on one and then if it doesn’t work I’ll move to the next one, or maybe half way through one of them I’m like, “Okay I want to take this in a different direction.” So like be open to not kind of following though with your original plan for how the article is gonna go. But yeah definitely know like if it’s for a magazine, like for this newsletter you know I knew it was mostly going to be people in the community who were interested in nature, maybe who were interested in birds but you might be writing for like, I don’t know, a friend of mine wrote a similar article for like Athens Magazine, and there you’re just gonna, you know people might be flipping through it that have never even thought about birds or anything to do with what you’re talking about and so knowing the audience I think is good.
Anya: Near the end of our interview, Josiah said something about stories that really stuck with me.
Josiah: I think that there are stories in basically everything. I think that humans need stories to make sense of the world, like we need to be able to fit things into a story, and I think that even with sort of scientific topic there are actually stories behind those, and if you are able to tell information and the context of that story readers are going to be a lot more interested in what you have to say.
Anya: I think that might be the overall conclusion of this season, no matter your job, major, or discipline, everything you do is a story. Stories help make sense of confusing topics like biology, ornithology, education, or poetry. They help to transform simple facts into something memorable, and to transform the boring into the beautiful. Josiah is right, everything can be a story. Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me this season and helping me learn so much about the stories that can be found in so many different subjects.
Anya: Well Josiah, thank you so much for talking to me.
Josiah: Of course, it was a pleasure.
Anya: This podcast is sponsored by the Franklin College Writing Intensive Program, which gives faculty the opportunity to offer writing-intensive courses in all disciplines, including over 20 departments: from art history and women’s studies to genetics and anthropology. This podcast reexamines the way writing is taught and learned through all majors and programs of study—across the curriculum here at UGA. You can find episodes of Red Penned on Apple Music, Spotify and the Writing Intensive Program’s Website. For the last time, I’ve been Anya Ricketson, have a great day.