The Margaret Watson Bird Club meeting will be held Thursday, May 2. The presenter this month is Lewis Barnett, who has long been involved with citizen science in Virginia and will discuss a project that combines birding, bird biology and big data.

The goal of this project is to construct an automated monitoring station that could provide data about the type and abundance of birds that visit a feeding station with minimal human effort. Images collected with a motion activated camera of birds visiting a feeder were used to train a software classifier that can then identify birds from new images automatically. There are a good many comical and interesting pictures captured by the camera during this process.

The meeting will be at the Farmville-Prince Edward Community Library at 1303 W. 3rd St, Farmville, at 6:30 p.m. for refreshments and the 7 p.m. presentation. The presentation will be followed by a business meeting. (Note: the previously scheduled program entitled Birds of Sandy River Reservoir has been cancelled).

Lewis Barnett is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Richmond and has been birding central Virginia for more than 20 years. He is past president and current treasurer of the Richmond Audubon Society and treasurer of the Virginia Audubon Council. Citizen science is an important component of Lewis’ birding activity. He is a long-time e-Birder and a participant in a number of monitoring studies including the Audubon Christmas Bird Count and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Breeding Bird Survey.

This meeting is free, and the community is welcome.