Brian Sullivan

Brian Sullivan is Birds of the World project lead at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and lead author of The Bird Guide: North America from Princeton University Press—a comprehensive field guide that represents a new era in bird identification.

Drawing on his role as project leader for eBird (2005-2017), the world's largest avian biodiversity dataset, Brian helped create a guide that transforms billions of bird observations into unprecedented insights about North American birds, and complements digital tools like the Merlin Bird ID app.

Brian's passion for bird identification, photography, and sound recording has taken him around the world—from Antarctica to the Arctic, and throughout the Americas—conducting fieldwork for over three decades. This extensive field experience coupled with his leading role in building digital technologies for birders informs his approach to making bird identification both scientifically rigorous and accessible to everyone.

He is co-author of several acclaimed field guides, including Peterson Guide to Bird Identification in 12 Steps, Better Birding: Tips, Tools & Concepts for the Field, and Offshore Sea Life ID Guide (covering both West and East coasts), as well as co-creator of the Raptor ID mobile app.

His current work at the Cornell Lab focuses on developing the vision for integrating observational, acoustic, rich media, and life history data into a unified, machine-readable ecosystem designed to power both human research and AI-assisted conservation planning.