Writing documents in Rmarkdown using Rstudio can make scientific workflow more efficient, and here I demonstrate how a scientific manuscript can be written using a classical data set first published by Herman Bumpus. I integrate Bumpus’ data with Rmarkdown to produce a sample manuscript, testing whether or not sparrow body length decreases survival following a storm in southern New England. Using a t-test, I show that surviving birds have lower body length than birds that do not survive. All analyses of data are incorporated into the underlying Rmarkdown document, including figures and a table. References are incorporated using BibTeX. The underlying code for this manuscript is publicly available on GitHub as part of the Stirling Coding Club organisation.