sparrow

These birds are ready for their close-up

Blake Eligh

If you want to get a bird’s eye view of campus wildlife, look no further than UTM Birdfeeder (@UTMBioOrnithCam), a Twitter account broadcasting all the news that’s fit to tweet at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

UTM Birdfeeder has been tweeting out photos, weather info and other tidbits, mostly to do with the feathered visitors to a high-tech bird feeder stationed on a green roof at the MAM building.

Biomedical communications lecturer Brian Sutherland and ornithologist and biology lecturer Sanja Hinic-Frlog are the humans behind the feeder and its social media account, which launched in in January 2014. Sutherland brings computer programming and hardware expertise, along with a knack for social media to the project, while Hinic-Frlog consults on feeder location, bird identification and student outreach.

“We wanted to create a sense of engagement with the campus environment,” Sutherland says of the project. “People are bound to the cities but they can virtually visit those places with web cams and photos.”

“Birds are great nature ambassadors, and a great way to connect students to the outdoors,” adds Hinic-Frlog. “We wanted to get students involved with the outdoors, but also in collecting remote data.”

Sutherland keeps the feeder stocked with seed, but also with technology. He has installed a camera in the top left corner of a simple wooden feeder, and tucked a palm-sized Raspberry Pi computer inside to transmit images. The unit is powered by a solar-charged marine battery – “The power lasts and lasts, but the birdseed only lasts about four days”— and connects to Sutherland’s computer via WiFi.

 

 

The camera takes a photo every minute during daylight hours—about 40,000 a month—and the Raspberry Pi computer transmits photos to Sutherland. Sutherland has created a code to analyze and filter the data to isolate images with birds or other activity.

Sutherland likes accessibility of the project, which requires a small budget assemble and run—about $30 for the bird feeder and $40 for the Raspberry Pi. “If you were putting a bird observation station out in the wild, it could cost more than $5,000,” he says. The tiny computer is small, user-friendly and runs with the speed of a Pentium 4. And then there’s the accessibility of the data--anyone can tune in via Twitter.

Sutherland is a big fan of Citizen Science projects, like UTM Birdfeeder, that allow anyone with a computer to collect and contribute data. “People have bird feeders because they like to look at them. It’s great if they can contribute to a scientific effort on tracking movement of bird species,” he says.

Sutherland and Hinic-Frlog would like to see a network of birdfeeders across the campus, relaying WiFi signals and information about the wildlife at UTM.

Although UTM is home to many bird species, the main visitors to the feeder are little brown house sparrows.

“The feeder is not in an ideal location, right now,” Hinic-Frlog notes, adding that the team is currently considering a new location for the feeder. “The current site is shiny and high up, and doesn’t have the cover of other vegetation. It would be ideal to have it on the ground with more diverse vegetation. We could experiment with different kinds of seeds or feeder to attract different kinds of birds.”