Hornby Island eagle cam

On March 29, Steven Colbert announced on The Colbert Report that he was about to become a father:

Stephen Colbert announced with pride on "The Colbert Report'' on Tuesday night that the San Francisco Zoo had offered to name a baby eagle after him. Colbert devoted much time to discussing this, to the delight of the zoo administration. A film crew arrives here Wednesday for official ceremonies. The new-born eagle to be chosen for this honor will be one hatched from 10 or so eggs that look like they'll be ready to go at that time.

The offer letter came from an enterprising volunteer who e-mailed Colbert's Webmaster. The outcome  --  so much jolly publicity  --  has been terrific, so congratulations to her. But, ummm, did she really have the right to make the offer Colbert couldn't refuse? "We had a little internal discussion about that,'' said the zoo's Alexander Winslow. "Bless her heart. Her heart was in the right place.'' [SFGate]

Inspired by this segment, I asked Thad if I could have a baby eagle. We really need one to deal with the pigeons. Thad said he would give me an eagle if he had one. I said I felt he wasn't making eagle procurement enough of a priority in our relationship. He said maybe I could ask the blog if they had any spare eagles.

Miraculously, Dave The Galloping Beaver sent me a link to the Hornby Island Eagle Cam.

The Cam-meister is David Carrick, a retired accountant who lives on Hornby. He's negotiating with a corporate sponsor to install a smaller cam that will enable viewers to see inside the nest.

Click to watch the birdies.

Comments

[mudkitty]

You had to ask Thad if you could have a baby eagle? What is this? The 1950's? If you want a baby eagle, go out and get yourself a baby eagle, for goodness sake! (Winking emoticon here.)

[John]

You can adopt an eagle, but you still can't pay me child support? That's it! I'm calling Raoul Felder.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Is Lindsay Jr. old enough to hunt pigeons? My they grow up fast.

[Njorl]

We had the live version of a birdcam last year. Robins built a nest on my daughter's windowledge. We were treated to three baby robins growing up and flying off. It couldn't have come at a better time. In school, my daughter was learning about birds, eggs and chicks. She was going through a very tough phase. She is severely autistic, and possibly schizophrenic and has gone through many prolonged periods of great distress (months at a time) when she can't communicate what is bothering her. We have always struggled to find ways for her to enjoy life. She loved watching the chicks grow. She would lay still on her bed, just watching for hours. She was always very respectful of them.

I was very pleased that they all survived the nesting. I had been working on two stories - "baby birds fly away when they are grown" and "sometimes things die". I'm glad I didn't need the latter. Now, the robins are back - not on the windowledge, but in our yard. She is very excited to see them.

[Dave]

That's me. The miracle relationship enhancer and eagle conjurer. :)

It may well be that these birds are now the most watched on the planet. CBC Newsworld and BBC just reported on this particular camera. I'll bet the server is getting packed.

I found the best viewing time to be just before sunset. So figure 8 pm Pacific or slightly earlier.

[Ron Sullivan]

You don't need an eagle to eat the pigeons. You need a peregrine falcon.

[Nicole]

Another great eagle cam is:

http://wdfw.wa.gov/wildwatch/eaglecam/index.html

Herons and seals are a bonus.

[John]

Lindsay, Jr. is fine, no thanks to you. Upon further review of my finances I realize I can only afford Lionel Hutz as my advocate. He advises me that I should flip a coin for visitation rights.
I call heads.

[Ted Powell]

It may well be that these birds are now the most watched on the planet. CBC Newsworld and BBC just reported on this particular camera. I'll bet the server is getting packed.

The load on the server went 'way up when the folks at digg.com found out about it. Nine hundred and more people watching at the same time.

Here's a comment that Richard Pitt left on digg.com last week:

Yes - and yesterday I heard a robin that must have been sitting on the camera box - chirping away looking for a girlfriend ;)

The nest is about 150' from the ocean, in a fairly old snag evergreen (tree that the top has broken off), on a rural road with fairly large properties (~1 acre or more) around it. I'm up there Thursday putting in a 800+ Gig disk array to capture higher res mpeg of the coming hatching and growth of the chick. The place across the street from where the encoder is has to be one of the strangest looking houses I've ever seen - I'll see about posting pictures some time next week on my blog at http://blog.pacdat.net - More to come - see http://forum.hancockhouse.com for more details.

I see from the second link that on Mar. 20 they had over 30,000 viewers. If you haven't had a look yet, you should. (It needs Windows Media Player 9, BTW.)

I just looked at the eagle-cam page, and saw, "Just to give you an idea of the amount of viewers, here at Infotec we are counting over two million viewers a day, and an average simultaneous connection count of 4,500 viewers." No wonder Richard said things were going crazy.

[Chief]

When I lived in the Bay Area, some forty plus years ago, the zoo in SF was named the Fleishaker Zoo (pronounced 'fly-shacker').

[Njorl]

"You don't need an eagle to eat the pigeons. You need a peregrine falcon. "

When I was a kid, we had heaps of pigeons in the neighborhood. One spring, a hawk showed up and started eating them. It was really amazing. They all just sat there on the rooftop, and the hawk would fly in and snag one. About three seconds later, they would scatter. They had no real predators but housecats before the hawk showed up. Half-way through summer, the hawk was gone. I figured he ate himself to death.