Jesse Fagan has been passionate about birds since his teens, when he had an encounter with a flying Pileated Woodpecker. He has birded throughout the United States, including spending seven years in Texas, and since 1995 has been studying the birds of El Salvador. In 2008 he published a CD of bird sounds of El Salvador, Vocalizaciones de las Aves de El Salvador. In 2005 and 2006 he co-led birding trips to Honduras, and in 2008 he guided the Field Guides inaugural tour to that country. He also designed and led the El Salvador banding tour and leads both tours to Guatemala. Jesse has birded in or led tours to Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and France. He is keenly interested in islands and enjoys leading many of the Field Guides tours in the Caribbean.

Jesse holds a B.S. and an M.S. in mathematics from Texas Tech University. Prior to joining Field Guides, he taught mathematics at the university level. Currently, he is working on a bilingual field guide to the birds of Northern Central America due to be published in 2013. He is known as the Motmot (or mot) to his closest birding pals.