The nest-eye video views of some elusive birds has become even more compelling: four falcon eggs and three owlets are dominating the views coming from local perches.
“We never saw more than two eggs, so it was a big surprise,” said Myrna Pearman at the Ellis Bird Farm this week. Pearman and her staff were alerted by keen bird watchers on April 23 that one great horned owlet could be seen on the bird sanctuary’s live Internet video camera aimed at an owl nest.
A second owlet showed its fuzzy face on April 26, and a third on May 1. The 24/7 video feed is hosted on Ustream.tv, an Internet broadcasting site that has hundreds of thousands of free channels and allows viewers to chat with each other in real time.
People from France, United Kingdom, United States and Alberta log onto the owl Internet channel regularly to check the happenings at the nest. Pearman said a second wide-angle camera should be installed in the next few days — perfect timing for when the three owlets start to learn to fly in a few weeks.
“Now is a good time to view them because Ellie (the female owl) is out of the nest, sometimes for hours, at night,” Pearman said.
“We have people who stay up all night and log the activities of Ellie and Albert (the male owl),” said Pearman of the bird farm’s star couple.
Pearman said biologists from all over North America have been logging on and commenting on the Ellis owl cam feed, as it is one of only a handful in the world live and online. Pearman added that many elementary and middle schools have notified her that the feed is running in classrooms.
The Ellis Bird Farm has issued a challenge to local school children to name the three owlets. The winning names will be announced on May 23 — opening day at the bird sanctuary. She also said the bird farm will add more nature feeds to its Ustream page soon, possibly giving viewers an inside look at a beaver dam on the Ellis grounds or the nests of different birds in the area, such as purple martins and swallows.
“We’re still in the planning stages as far as which animals to include, but everyone should stay tuned this summer, it’s going to be exciting,” Pearman said.
The Red Deer River Naturalists have also noticed (through four cameras operating on Ustream) several new additions to their adopted family of peregrine falcons. Viewers of the naturalists’ Ustream channel have been watching the happenings of a nesting box, perched 95 metres atop the Telus tower in Red Deer since April. The female peregrine, Perry, is incubating four eggs.
“Every time we watch, we learn something new and that’s the whole idea — to educate people what’s going on in the falcon’s world,” said Judy Boyd with the naturalists.
Boyd said the falcons have been returning to the nestbox each spring for 11 years, but because of the Internet video streams (started two years ago) the naturalists and Alberta Fish and Wildlife have made many interesting discoveries about the nature of peregrine falcons.
“They do more vocalizations than I thought they did, at one point they were making noises that sounded like donkeys,” Boyd said.
She said because of the use of webcams in the study of peregrines, researchers have discovered females will fight other females, and males will fight other males, often to the death, for control of a nest. Peregrine females are usually larger than the males and both sexes handle the incubation of eggs.
Boyd added that Perry severely injured Georgeanne (the previous female peregrine living in the nesting box) in one of these fights last year, and the falcon cam helped the naturalists better understand this event.
The nestbox’s male peregrine, Windsong, is believed to be the same male falcon from last year that helped incubate and raise three eyasses (infant falcons) before migrating for the winter.
Links to the falcon and owl cams can be found on the Advocate’s homepage at www.reddeeradvocate.com or by visiting ellisbirdfarm.ca and rdrn.fanweb.ca.
syoung@www.reddeeradvocate.com