The Potomac Valley Audubon Society’s monthly program for May will feature a presentation entitled “The Vulture: Invaluable Friend, Unfortunate Underdog.”

The program will be held at 7 p.m. May 14 at the National Conservation Training Center outside Shepherdstown. It will be held in room 114 of the Center’s Instructional East Building.

Admission will be free and everyone is welcome to attend.

The speaker will be Katie Fallon, a West Virginia birder and writer who lives in Morgantown. She will discuss the ways in which vultures provide a key and valuable service for the ecosystems in which they live.

Fallon has taught creative writing at West Virginia University and Virginia Tech.

An avid birder, she is also one of the founders of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, a nonprofit organization devoted to conserving birds through research, education, and rehabilitation.

She is the author of numerous nonfiction articles and essays and a recent book about Cerulean warblers: Cerulean BluesA Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird (Ruka Press, 2011).

She has a BA from Penn State University and an MFA from WVU.

The program will mark the culmination of the Potomac Valley Audubon Society’s ten-day recognition of the 2014 International Migratory Birding Day (IMBD) celebration.

The theme for this year’s IMBD is “Why Birds Matter.”