Team

Please meet the core team that makes the Birds of the World platform possible. In addition to this core team, BOW species accounts are written and revised by more than two thousand authors from regions around the world (learn more about authors by clicking “About the authors’ on the left hand side of any account). Are you interested in contributing science, data, media, or other time or talents to Birds of the World? Learn more here.

Science Editors:

Distinguished Science Editors (retired)

  • Josep del Hoyo, Handbook of Birds of the World
  • Paul Rodewald, Birds of North America, Birds of the World
  • Tom Schulenberg, Neotropical Birds, Birds of the World

Organizational Leads

  • The A.P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute: Adams Chaskda and Tende Talatu
  • Aves Argentinas: Kini Roesler
  • BirdsCaribbean: Caroline Pott
  • Bird Count India: Praveen J and Suhel Quader
  • Birds of Southern Africa (Roberts 8): Derek Engelbrecht, Editor-in-Chief
  • CORBIDI: Fernando Angulo
  • Fundación Ñankulafkén: Tomás Rivas Fuenzalida
  • GECI: Federico Méndez
  • Oikonos: Ryan Carle
  • Red de Observadores de Aves y Vida Silvestre de Chile: Vicente Pantoja and Romina Tapia
  • Unión Venezolana de Ornitólogos: Cristina Sainzand Adriana Rodríguez-Ferraro
  • SAVE Brasil: Alice Reisfeld
  • Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute: Scott Lin

Learn more about the people and organizations that collaborate with BOW.

Copyeditors:

Project and Software Team:

Undergraduate Project Assistants:

Science Team:

Per Alström

Consulting Associate Editor

Per Alström is a Professor of Ornithology at Uppsala University (Department of Ecology and Genetics). Born in southwest Sweden, Per has been a keen birder since he was a child. He started traveling abroad in his teens, and altogether, has spent several years in the field in some 20 countries in Asia, as well as multiple trips to North America and parts of Africa. His previous appointments include the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Swedish Species Information Centre), and the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Per has been involved in descriptions of seven species and three subspecies of birds new to science. He is the author of >110 scientific papers (mainly on taxonomy, systematics and various aspects of avian evolution) and >60 popular science articles (including many on difficult-to-identify bird species), and first author of two highly acclaimed books, A Field Guide to the Rare Birds of Britain and Europe (1991) and Pipits and Wagtails of Europe, Asia and North America (2003) and co-author of chapters in two volumes of Handbook of the Birds of the World (2004, 2006) and six chapters in The Largest Avian Radiation: The Evolution of Perching Birds, or the Order Passeriformes (Fjeldså et al. 2020). Per is currently cowriting, with Paul Donald, a handbook to the larks of the world. Finally, Per is advisor to the IOC World Bird List, a member of the recently founded Working Group on Avian Checklists and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the international ornithological journal Avian Research, as well as Fellow of The Explorers Club and The Linnean Society of London.

 

Ken Behrens

Consulting Associate Editor: Africa and Madagascar

Ken is a passionate birder, field naturalist, world traveler, and biologist. He has co-authored several natural history books, including a site guide to Ethiopia, a guide to the wildlife of Madagascar, and a guide to the wildlife habitats of the world. Ken has worked for over 10 years as a guide for Tropical Birding, on five different continents. He is a founding member of Pitta Environmental Consulting, and a director of 8th Continent Expeditions. Ken was born in the U.S. After first traveling and working extensively in the western hemisphere and Europe, he moved to Africa, where he has lived for more than a decade. He now lives in Madagascar with his wife and children. Ken’s main focus for Birds of the World is improving and updating species accounts from Africa and Madagascar.

 

Shawn Billerman

Science Editor 

Shawn has extensive expertise in systematics, taxonomy, and evolutionary biology. As co-author of Bird Families of the World, he has particular interest in higher level taxonomy and speciation. As part of his dissertation research at the University of Wyoming and postdoctoral research at the Lab of Ornithology, Shawn studied hybridization in sapsuckers, towhees, and orioles using genetic data, climate data, and behavior data to understand differences that can lead to the evolution of species. Shawn has been an avid birder since he was 8 years old and is excited to bring his knowledge, experience, and passion for birds and bird diversity to a new audience with Birds of the World.

 

Peter Boesman

Consulting Associate Editor: Vocalizations

Peter BoesmanPeter started birding at a young age in his home country of Belgium. He soon birded all over Europe, and shared his bird knowledge by writing articles, co-authoring a book about the birds of Flanders and joining the Belgian Rarities Committee—all while completing his MSc in both Engineering sciences and Music. In the early 90s he moved to the Neotropics where he developed a special interest in bird sounds. He pioneered sharing bird song recordings by making multimedia productions and his MP3 collections were the reference for many Neotropical countries in the pre-internet days. Back in Belgium, he continues to focus on recording and studying bird sounds, and he has been especially prolific in analyzing bird vocalizations to support taxonomy and identification. Peter has written more than 1,000 voice accounts for Birds of the World, 400+ notes on the vocal distinctiveness of taxa, and several bird sound-related scientific papers. Peter’s entire bird sound collection – about 30,000+ recordings from about half the world’s bird species – are now all available at the Macaulay Library. He continues to provide expert voice accounts for Birds of the World.

 

Arnau Bonan Barfull

Consulting Associate Editor

Arnau Bonan is a biologist, birdwatcher and bird ringer from Barcelona. He has provided ornithological expertise on a freelance basis to a number of companies, public administration bodies and scientific institutions. With a particular interest in steppe birds, he has engaged in studies of such species and has been involved in producing the technical documents for the Recovery Plans for several steppe bird species in Catalonia. As a bird ringer, he has been responsible for a number of Constant Effort Sites and has taken part in several spring and autumn bird migration studies. He has worked at Lynx Edicions as an ornithological manager of the Internet Bird Collection, an editor of HBW Alive, responsible for adding multimedia links to the species accounts, and as an editor and project coordinator for the Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides collection and other book projects.

 

Steve Debus

Consulting Associate Editor

Stephen J. S. Debus, PhD has been interested in raptors since childhood, but first studied the biology of the Black Falcon in a voluntary capacity in 2004. Since then he has studied various raptors in the field, including Black Falcons in 2010–2016, in a voluntary (spare-time) capacity around a postdoctoral fellowship on woodland passerines, and working as an ecological consultant for government and industry on fauna surveys, assessments, and conservation plans (mainly birds) while also co-supervising graduate raptor projects. In 2017–2022 he was contracted by a government agency to survey and monitor the nests of threatened raptors. He has written around 150 papers and several books or book chapters, mainly on raptors, including field guides to Australian raptors and owls, and monographs on the Australasian eagles and Australian falcons. He edited the journal Australian Field Ornithology for 32 years, and the BirdLife Australia Raptor Group’s newsletter Boobook for stints of 10 and 15 years.

 

Miguel David De Leon

Consulting Associate Editor: Philippines

Miguel is a vitreoretina surgeon and a field biologist based in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. He is the Director of the Robert S. Kennedy Bird Conservancy, a small group of naturalists and photographers that documents poorly known birds aimed at contributing to science and ultimately, to conservation of birds and habitats. He is also the Director of the Return Flights Raptor Facility, a government-partnered rescue and rehabilitation facility for injured and confiscated birds. He has discovered more than 40 new species of orchids and Hoya in the years before developing an intense interest in ornithology. In 2022, after studying Leonardina woodi for four years, he published the monograph, ‘Demystifying the Bagobo Babbler, The Philippines’s most secretive bird.’ He focuses on the natural history of birds and is particularly driven by anything that is rare, poorly-known or unknown. Along with colleagues from the National University Singapore, he is working on two likely new taxa of buttonquails and cryptic variation of Mindanao endemics.

Outside of the two days devoted to his medical practice, he spends much of any given week in the wilds and works towards preserving what Robert S. Kennedy calls the ‘naturalness of this unique archipelago and country. Miguel has a M.D. and B.S. in Biology from the University of the Philippines.

 

Paul Fenwick

Consulting Associate Editor: Media

Paul Fenwick with binocularsPaul joined the Birds of the World team in 2020 with a focus on incorporating the Macaulay Library’s vast media resources into species accounts. Introduced to birds at an early age, his passion for birds has transformed into advocacy, and he is actively engaged in a multitude of conservation efforts. His primary concentration is on introducing youth to biodiversity conservation. He also serves as Director of the Point Pinos Seawatch for Monterey Audubon, which aims to monitor population trends in Pacific nearshore bird species. Paul is an eBird reviewer for Monterey County and has been an active contributor to eBird since 2010.

Natalia Garcia

Consulting Associate Editor: Recent splits

Natalia is a researcher for CONICET (Argentina’s National Research Council), working at the Ornithology Division of the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales (Buenos Aires, Argentina). She first joined the Museum’s Ornithology Division to do her undergrad thesis and stayed there to get her Ph.D., after becoming fascinated by birds and museum collections. She then did a postdoc at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, to study the genetic basis of vocal variation. During her time there, she used the collections of the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates and Birds of the World to teach an undergrad course about global avian diversity. She is mainly interested in the evolution of acoustic and visual communication in birds, and how these can be used to understand speciation and improve species classification. For Birds of the World, she is focusing on updating accounts of recently split species.

Harold Greeney

Consulting Associate Editor

Born an entomologist and trained as an ornithologist, Harold aspires to be an ever-curious student of natural history. In 1999 he sold everything except for his butterfly net and binoculars and moved to Ecuador to develop the Yanayacu Biological Station & Center for Creative Studies, at 2000 m on the east slope of the Andes. During the 15 years he lived there he spent his time exploring, dreaming, and learning, sharing his knowledge of the area through more than 250 research papers on the natural history of birds and butterflies. After moving to Arizona to start a family, with the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he recently finished a book treating the antpittas and gnateaters, his two favorite groups of birds. He now lives in Arizona with his wife and three children.

James A. Jobling

Editor of the Key to Scientific Names (Consultant)

James A. JoblingJames is a retired civil servant, with a background in finance and land registration.  Since childhood he has been fascinated by the natural world, especially birds, and languages, and for many years worked on the Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names, published by Oxford University Press in 1991.  In the intervening years a larger edition appeared (Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names 2010), and his obsession grew into an association with Lynx Edicions to create and edit the HBW Alive Key to Scientific Names In Ornithology (2014-2020), now fully incorporated into Birds of the World. He is an avid birdwatcher and has birdwatched on every continent (except Antarctica!)  A former member of the British Ornithologists’ Union and committee member of the British Ornithologists’ Club, he has also led bird-watching holidays in Europe, but now tends to conduct ventures abroad at a more leisurely pace, concentrating instead on improving his collection of books and material relating to birds and the meanings of their names.

Roselvy Juárez

Consulting Associate Editor

Born in El Salvador, Roselvy started her ornithological career in 2001 when a zoology professor introduced her to birds. She has a MSc in biology and has worked in El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica as a research assistant on bird monitoring studies. Roselvy is a North American Banding Council (NABC)-certified trainer for banding Passerines and near Passerines and has banded thousands of birds in El Salvador and Honduras. She is particularly interested in acoustic communication and in the effect of urbanization on territory size, acoustic communication, and survival of birds. She is now a researcher at the Zamorano Biodiversity Center in Honduras. Since 2011, she has compiled El Salvador bird sightings for the American Birding Association journal North American Birds and is an eBird reviewer for El Salvador.

Brooke Keeney

Sr. Managing Editor

Brooke grew up in the California Bay Area and spent her college years as a Curatorial Assistant in the Ornithology and Mammalogy collections of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at University of California Berkeley. Following college, she worked as a field biologist in Hawaii and California’s Channel Islands before getting a PhD in Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology from University of California Riverside. She has worked within the larger umbrella of digital publishing since 2009. As Managing Editor, Brooke combines her background in educational resource design with her passion to make digital natural history engaging, authoritative, and accessible.

Guy Kirwan

Associate Editor, former HBW Alive editor

Guy KirwanGuy was born in northwest England and has been a birdwatcher for more than 40 years. Despite an honors degree in History and English literature, he has never worked in any other field but ornithology. Primarily an editor of monographs, field guides and other bird books, he worked on two volumes of The Handbook of the Birds of the World, between 2012 and 2019 he updated or wrote more than 3,300 accounts for HBW Alive, and in 2011 he was also heavily involved with producing some of the first texts for Neotropical Birds, all of them precursors to Birds of the World. He has conducted ornithological field research in Turkey, Yemen and Socotra, Brazil, and Cuba, and has published widely in the technical literature on birds. Following ten years living part-time in Brazil, he is again residing in Norwich, in eastern England, and is a Scientific Associate of the Bird Group, at the Natural History Museum, Tring, although he also maintains professional associations with the Field Museum of Natural History, in Chicago, and the Museu Nacional, in Rio de Janeiro.

 

Gerardo Marrón

Consulting Associate Editor: Mexico

Gerardo MarronGerardo graduated in Marine Biology from Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur. His work has focused on shorebird migration and seabird ecology in northwestern Mexico, as well as the distribution and ecology of landbirds in the mountains, oases and islands of the Baja California peninsula. His scholarly interests include the endemic birds of the Baja California peninsula, their taxonomic status, and the ecological characteristics that limit their distribution. Gerardo has taught ornithology and statistics as well as environmental education, and has hosted birding and avitourism workshops in rural areas of Mexico. Gerardo’s main focus in Birds of the World will be to complement and update information on species that are distributed in Mexico.

 

Fernando Medrano

South American Lead Editor

Fernando Medrano has had a lifelong interest in wildlife and entered into the world of birding at 18 years old when he started his career as an engineer at Universidad de Chile. Here, he became involved in the Laboratorio de Ecologia y Vida Silvestre (LEVS), and practiced bird monitoring techniques in different habitats throughout Chile, including work with the Critically Endangered Chilean Woodstar (Eulidia yarrellii). In this same University, he continued to do a MSc in Biology, where he explored the drivers of clutch size variability in songbirds. Throughout his career, he has been involved in the Chilean NGO “Red de Observadores de Aves y Vida Silvestre de Chile” (ROC), working actively in projects of seabird and waterbird monitoring and conservation, managing the Chilean eBird portal since 2015, being part of the editorial committee of the Chilean journal “La Chiricoca” and designing a network of shorebird protection. In this NGO, he also led the first Chilean Breeding Bird Atlas (the very first using eBird as the main data source, and the first in continental South America). Fernando was also part of the discovery of the first breeding colonies for Markham’s Storm-Petrel, Ringed Storm-Petrel, and Elliot’s Storm-Petrel in the Atacama Desert. As South American Lead, Fernando is responsible for finding, supporting, and coordinating authors, editors, and partners in South America.

 

Steven Mlodinow

Consulting Associate Editor

Steven MlodinowSteven received his B.A. from Bowdoin College in 1984 and his M.D. from the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine in 1989. He has authored three books and more than fifty peer-reviewed articles pertaining to ornithology, with a special interest in biogeography and status-and-distribution. Steven served as a regional editor for North American Birds (and its predecessors) from 1999 to 2009 and again from 2012 to 2015. He was a member of the Washington Bird Records Committee from 1999 to 2015 and is currently a member of the Colorado Bird Records Committee. Goals for the near future include investigating potential full-species status for several taxa endemic to Baja California Sur, including the Cape Pygmy-Owl (Glaucidium gnoma hoskinsii), the San Lucan Vireo (Vireo cassinii lucasanus), and the San Lucan Robin (Turdus migratorius confinis).

Yoav Perlman

Consulting Associate Editor: Israel

Yoav PerlmanA lifelong birder, Yoav grew up in Israel and has traveled the world extensively. He has been involved in bird conservation, research and monitoring since early career stages and has a PhD in conservation ecology. Yoav is science director for BirdLife Israel. Yoav is involved in the taxonomic committee of the Ornithological Society of the Middle East and Central Asia (OSME), and co-authored the recent publication Pocket Checklist of the Birds of OSME Region. Yoav is also leader of eBird Israel, and eBird reviewer for Israel and neighboring territories.

 

Peter Pyle

Consulting Associate Editor: Appearance 

Peter grew up primarily in Hawaii and has worked as an ornithologist and marine biologist. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he partook in the Hawaii, Micronesia, and Samoa Forest Bird Surveys, during the 1980s-2000s he did research on birds and white sharks at the Farallon Islands off San Francisco, and he currently is a staff biologist at The Institute for Bird Populations in Point Reyes Station, California, where he specializes in bird molts and plumages. Peter is a Research Associate at the B.P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, and the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco. He has authored or co-authored over 200 scientific papers and four books, including Identification Guide to North America Birds, Parts 1 and 2, widely used by bird banders, museum researchers, field biologists, and birders. Peter’s main focus is the Appearance Section of each Birds of the World species account.

 

Pamela Rasmussen

Senior Research Associate—Avian Systematist

Pam joined the Cornell Lab as Senior Research Associate—Avian Systematist in 2023. Pam grew up birding in Oregon, received a Ph.D. at the University of Kansas, and then worked at the Smithsonian Institution before moving to Michigan, where she taught biology (including ornithology) at Michigan State University. She co-authored Birds of South Asia: the Ripley Guide; co-authored the descriptions of 11 new Asian bird species; and was co-rediscoverer of the Forest Owlet. She has led study abroad programs to Uganda, Borneo, Indonesia, Antarctica, and Costa Rica, among others, and has submitted eBird lists for more than 70 countries. In 2008 she founded the global bird sounds site AVoCet. She is an Associate Editor for ZOOTAXA, Co-Managing Editor of the IOC World Bird List, has served on NACC for over 20 years and serves on the IOU’s Working Group Avian Checklist, a global bird taxonomy consolidation project. Pam is the lead taxonomist for Birds of the World.

 

Puja Sharma

Consulting Associate Editor

Puja is an ardent birder and bird sound-recordist from India, with a background in finance and banking. She saw her first Siberian Cranes at Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary when she was 9 years old, and has been fascinated by outdoors and nature, especially birds, since she was a child. While living at her grandparents’ house in Mussoorie in the western Himalayan foothills, she found her profound love for bird sounds, and has been enthralled by bird vocalizations since. Nothing gives her more joy than birding and hiking the mighty Himalaya mountains and pointing her microphone to a bird until it has been heard (and recorded!) to speak for itself. A natural history enthusiast, she has a keen interest in studying historical bird literature, specimens, and mapping records of the birds of the Indian Subcontinent. She was involved in contributing state-first records for three states of India (Punjab, Uttarakhand, and Manipur), and recently, two country-first records for India; and rediscovering Mount Victoria Babax in Mizoram. She is part of the editorial board of Indian BIRDS journal and truly believes in making information on birds universally accessible.

 

Nicholas Sly

Science Editor

Nicholas is a lifelong birder and naturalist with a deep passion for biodiversity. He first joined the Lab of Ornithology as an undergraduate and from there launched a career researching birds in both the lab and the field. He gained experience in the life history and ecology of birds on field projects across North America and the Neotropics, before transitioning to studying avian evolution and genomics in the lab. Nicholas’s particular research passion is bird coloration, and his dissertation research at the University of Montana and postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin focused on identifying the genetic basis for color patterns in bird plumage. Nicholas joined the Birds of the World team in 2022, where he is excited to contribute his ornithological expertise and share his love of birds with a broad audience.

 

John van Dort

Consulting Associate Editor 

John started birding in his early teens in his native Netherlands, before spending most of his adult life in the Americas, with stints in the U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua. He has resided in Honduras since 2011, where he works as a researcher with the Zamorano Biodiversity Center. Trained as a linguist with an MA in English Literature from Boston University, John has nevertheless worked with birds (and lately also bats) for most of his professional life. He’s banded 3,000+ landbirds in Central America, and since 2017 has been co-author of the Central American column in the American Birding Association journal North American Birds. John is an eBird reviewer for Honduras and Costa Rica and has been an admin for and active contributor to the eBird Central America portal since 2013.

Distinguished Science Editors, Retired

  • Josep del Hoyo, Founder, Handbook of Birds of the World
  • Paul Rodewald, Birds of North America, Birds of the World
  • Tom Schulenberg, Neotropical Birds, Birds of the World

Copyeditor Team

JoAnn Hackos

Copyeditor Team Lead

JoAnn Hackos, PhD, is retired as the founder and president of Comtech Services, Inc., an international consulting firm working with corporations to improve the quality and reduce the costs of developing and publishing technical information. She has authored seven books on technical communication, including Managing Your Documentation Projects (John Wiley & Sons). She chairs the International Standards Organization (ISO) committee on information for users of technical products and systems. As an environmentalist, she is active in promoting the health of wildlife and biological resources worldwide, and especially in her home in Colorado. She chairs the Colorado Sierra Club Oil and Gas Committee, is the Conservation Board Member of Evergreen Audubon, the Vice President of Audubon Colorado Council, and a member of the Wildlife and Biological Resources Coalition. These groups work to protect human health and safety as well as wildlife and biological resources at a time of increased oil and gas fracking and pollutants leaking into the environment and increasing global warming. She is a lifelong birder with over 700 birds on her North American life list and a member of the Golden-Wing Society of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

 

Robin Curie

Volunteer Copyeditor

Robin Murie is a retired ESL professional who specialized in program development and teaching college writing to non-native speakers of English. She directed a first-year college program for immigrant students at the University of Minnesota, developed ESL programs at the University campus in Duluth, and taught numerous writing and editing courses. Her interest in birding began at an early age on the ranch of her grandparents, Mardy and Olaus Murie.  As an amateur birder, she is delighted to be on the editing team for Birds of the World.

 

Daphne Walmer

Volunteer Copyeditor

Daphne WalmerDaphne Walmer is a retired expert in technical communications, translation, and localization. She managed groups at three corporations: Medtronic, Fisher-Rosemount Systems, Inc., and CPT Corporation. She led the development of the Medtronic eManuals website and was responsible for a pilot of electronic manuals that helped to change European regulations to allow internet distribution of medical device manuals. She also led the development of a global component content management system that integrated authoring and language translation tools for 30+ languages. A long-time member of the Advisory Board for the Center for Information Development Management (CIDM), Daphne loves the outdoors and has been watching and enjoying birds most of her life.

 

Project and Software Team:

Mike Charnoky

Software Developer 

Mike has more than two decades of software experience and enjoys applying technology to provide useful services to aid researchers, policy makers and birders. At the Lab, Mike designs software and computer infrastructure used to manage content related to the life histories of birds. His past work includes applications in public transit, computer security, and digital audio.

 

Jeff Gerbracht

Lead Software Architect 

Jeff joined the lab as a software engineer and GIS developer in 2001 following a career in industry. He grew up as an outdoorsman and conservationist and started serious birding at the age of nine. He has worked as an eBird developer since its inception and is now the lead software architect responsible for a number of the Lab’s projects. He developed the custom content management system used for Birds of North America and Neotropical Birds using his experience and interest in taxonomy and life histories and has lead the software development team that is producing the Birds of the World platform. He worked closely with Lynx to ensure a smooth and accurate migration of the life history content from HBW Alive into Birds of the World and is in charge of developing new features as the project expands.

 

Laura Kammermeier

Business Manager, Digital Publications

Laura is the Business Manager for Birds of the World. She is a keen birder and has devoted her life and work to birds and nature conservation. After completing her Masters degree in Aquatic Ecology at Kent State University, she developed a broad background in citizen science, business, marketing, and communications in the nature and travel industry. She led two large citizen science projects, including Project Feederwatch in the early 2000s. After that, she built a freelance marketing business that served a broad array of conservation nonprofits and travel companies. She began travel writing in 2008 and had the pleasure of watching birds and meeting birders in more than a dozen countries – she published in magazines and built a birding travel website. She returned ‘home’ to the Cornell Lab in 2018 to again serve bird conservation by bringing Birds of the World to a growing network of scientists, birders, nonprofits, and academic libraries around the world. Laura focuses most of her free time at home watching birds and “rewilding” her land back to nature.

 

Jessica Kane

Accounts Manager

Jessica KaneJessica Kane provides customer support to the both individual and academic customers of Birds of the World, a subscription-based online database containing over 10,000 species accounts (one for every bird in the world). She handles institutional renewals and new business contracting. In addition, she applies her academic training in GIS to help train student assistants in producing first-draft maps for Birds of the World. Jessica enjoys helping anyone who needs or wants access to this one-of-a-kind resource gets it and that they continue to enjoy the valuable content it provides.

 

Will Morris

Designer 

Will has designed and developed of web sites and applications at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology since 2004, including Birds of North America, Neotropical Birds, and the JAGuar species account management system that powers them. Other projects include eBird.org, eBird Mobile, and Merlin Bird ID. A life-long outdoor enthusiast and late-comer to birding, Will is slowly working on his identification skills and chipping away at his life list.

 

Matt Schloss

Web Designer and Developer

Matt has a strong interest in content architecture and inclusive design, and has a special concentration in integrating media from the Macaulay Library across many Cornell Lab of Ornithology projects. He has a passion for bird behavior and science. His past work includes designing and creating interactive multimedia experiences with renowned artists.

 

Brian Sullivan

Project Lead, Digital Publications 

Brian came to the Cornell Lab in 2005 to put his lifelong passion for birds to work building eBird. After seeing eBird mature into a global bird monitoring database, he turned his attention to a new role: Digital Publications Lead for Information Science, where he now guides the Birds of the World project. Brian has conducted fieldwork on birds for more than 25 years, with a special interest in diurnal raptors and geographic variation. He has authored numerous papers for both popular and scientific literature and is a co-author of several bird identification books as well as a groundbreaking Raptor Id app for mobile devices. Brian also enjoys bird photography, sound recording, and videography. When not thinking about birds, Brian is busy trying to convince his daughter that birds are cool! Brian is currently based in Monterey, California.

 

Heather Wolf

Web Developer

Heather has more than a decade of experience developing software applications, but it wasn’t until she started working at the Cornell Lab that she was able to combine her love of birds with her technical skills. Heather started birding on Florida’s Gulf Coast after being intrigued by the aggressive behavior of Least Terns during nesting season. She currently enjoys documenting and photographing birds around her New York City patch, Brooklyn Bridge Park.

 

Undergraduate Project Assistants:

 

Gracey Brouillard

Undergraduate Editorial Assistant

Gracey is an undergraduate senior at Cornell University majoring in Environment and Sustainability and concentrating in Evolutionary Biology and Applied Ecology. She is passionate about ornithology and interested in the intersection of science and art. Her future career aspirations involve studying human-wildlife interactions, doing applied conservation research, creative writing, science communication, and climate activism. Being a Birds of the World Editorial Assistant has given Gracey valuable experience that fits with those goals. In addition, Gracey is working on her honors thesis with the Vitousek Lab, testing the effect of temperature and stress on blowfly abundance and development in Tree Swallow nests. In her free time, Gracey likes to bird, volunteer at the Cornell Raptor Program, rock climb, play Dungeons and Dragons, and read too many books at once. 

 

Cooper Couden

Undergraduate Editorial Assistant

Cooper is an undergraduate student studying Environment and Sustainability at Cornell. He has previously worked under Dr. Gemma Clucas as a biotech assistant and now works on editing maps for Birds of the World. Cooper hopes to learn more about GIS systems, along with behavioral systems in passerine social groups. In between classes he reads science fiction and goes birding.

 

Leo Gilman

Undergraduate Editorial Assistant

Leo is a Cornell University sophomore studying Environment and Sustainability. Leo was born in Los Angeles, CA and has had a lifelong obsession with birds and animals. Leo has a strong interest in the genetics of avian nest morphology, with a recent dive into raptor husbandry. Outside of class, Leo enjoys drawing, painting on clothes, playing with his band, and birding.

 

Andre Golumbeski

Undergraduate Maps Assistant

Andre GolumbeskiAndre is a junior at Cornell University studying Environment and Sustainability. He is a lifelong birder who loves nothing more than learning about the world through birds. He has a specific interest in avian conservation and hopes to pursue a career in this field. A self professed geography nerd, Andre is excited to be a part of the team, editing maps for Birds of the World species accounts. When not making maps or birding, Andre can be found preparing specimens in the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates or playing his guitar.

 

 

August Davidson-Onsgard

Undergraduate Media Assistant

A native of Brooklyn, NY, August is pursuing an undergraduate degree in Biology from College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. In high school, August led bird walks for his local birding club and conducted research in the American Museum of Natural History. Here at the Cornell Lab, August’s research focus is on feather morphology and breeding behaviors. Outside of research, August is an avid photographer. His work has appeared in the Lab’s Living Bird magazine as well as in publications by Audubon, NPR, and CBS. August joins Birds of the World as a media assistant.

 

Dimitris Salas

Undergraduate Maps Assistant 

DimitrisDimitris is an undergraduate Environment and Sustainability major in the College of Agriculture and Life Science. He is interested in ecology, conservation, museum science and biogeography. Outside of school and research, he enjoys birding, herping, photography and drawing. He is excited to be making range maps as part of the Birds of the World team

 

Audrey Su

Undergraduate Media Assistant 

Audrey is a senior from Chicago, IL studying Environment and Sustainability in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. She is particularly interested in working at the intersection of environmental conservation and communication to promote coexistence between humans and wildlife. Audrey joins Birds of the World as a media assistant. When she’s not curating galleries of media for Birds of the World, she enjoys drawing, baking, and birding. 

 

Huy Truong

Undergraduate Maps Assistant

Huy TruongHuy is an undergraduate student studying Biological Sciences in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences. Huy is most interested in using quantitative methods, computational tools, and GIS programs to learn more about vertebrate evolution, phylogenetics, and biogeography. As an avid birder and mapping geek, Huy joins Birds of the World as a mapping assistant, revising and updating the maps for species accounts.

 

Claire Walter

Undergraduate Editorial Assistant

Claire WalterClaire is a freshman Biological Sciences major in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University. Her prior experience as a medical research intern at the University of Michigan sparked an interest in research and publishing and fed a passion for biology. In between classes at Cornell, she enjoys reading, writing, and birdwatching. Claire joins Birds of the World as an editorial assistant.

 

Eliza Wein

Undergraduate Maps Assistant 

Eliza is an undergraduate at Cornell University studying Environment and Sustainability. Eliza first became interested in birds when she observed a Cedar Waxwing at the age of 13. Eliza is most interested in using GIS and quantitative tools to learn about bird spatial ecology and conservation. She joins the Birds of the World team as a map-maker, where she combines an interest in geography and ornithology to create static maps. 

 


We are also grateful for the contributions of

  • Linsey Chen – Marketing Assistant
  • Luca Bielski – Editorial Assistant
  • Yumi Romano – Maps Assistant
  • All past students, editors, and contributors. Your work lives on!