Rfalconcam Forum

Hi Folks,

long time no see (and sorry about that). Today, I have some exciting news I'd like to share with you:

The pair of peregrine falcons - Perenelle and Falco - who took up residence in a tall and unfinished building in Fellbach (Germany) 1 year ago have started breeding about a week ago! We had managed to have 2 webcams installed in the nestbox just in time with not quite 2 weeks to spare before the first egg was laid. Which is why we know that they are now sitting on four eggs.

You can follow the activities on top of the 107 meter tall building via a dedicated website:

http://falcommunity.de/ (http://falcommunity.de/)

It's obviously in German so here are the "important" l inks:

Camera 1 outside the nestbox
http://falcommunity.de/falkenkameras/falken-cam1 (http://falcommunity.de/falkenkameras/falken-cam2)

Camera 2 inside the nestbox:
http://falcommunity.de/falkenkameras/falken-cam2 (http://falcommunity.de/falkenkameras/falken-cam2)

If the stream doesn't start, refreshing the page and then clicking on the start icon usually helps.

Galerie page with collection of pictures captured by the cameras:
http://falcommunity.de/bildergalerie/falken-cam-galerie (http://falcommunity.de/bildergalerie/falken-cam-galerie)

Here is a picture captured shortly after the cameras were operative - Falco about to land:
https://nabu-fellbach.de/showimage.php?unid=2787 (https://nabu-fellbach.de/showimage.php?unid=2787)

Enjoy poking around!

Cheers
Baerbel

Thanks for the links...exciting news! Will be watching!

Thank you for the links, we can never have too many falcons to watch  :happy:

Very nice setup!

Good to see you! Looking forward to another scrape to watch!

Thanks, Shaky!

I wasn't involved with the technical setup but we luckily have a member in our conservation group who has the relevant know-how and prepared everything. We have a page about the setup (in German (http://falcommunity.de/technik)) and Google-translate does a reasonable job at translating it, but loses all the pictures in the result (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffalcommunity.de%2Ftechnik).

Cheers
Baerbel

I like that little Green Backyard  HD Bird Camera Kit. I might get 2 of them to replace Cameras 2 and 3 if I can figure out a better mounting system. (The included mounts have 2 degrees of freedom. We need 3 because our roof is slanted.)

Their setup is similar to our 2 setups in Powers and TSB. Powers has an NVR and a POE switch driving the IP HD Cameras. TSB has a wireless Internet antenna system and POE+ for the HD PTZ dome Camera (Main). I will be installing an NVR at TSB in a few weeks. Both Powers and TSB have 3 servers each streaming video (2 live and one backup) to YouTube, which is the streaming provider for the Rfalconcam website.

What really stands out for me at Fellbach is the precision engineered nest box mounting system. It's beautiful!

Jess received this from Dr. Friedemann Tewald:


Thank you for contacting us, Dr. Tewald!

Our roof is slanted also. My brother produced a wooden wedge to correct the angle. This is for the dome camera. We want the camera to pan horizontal.

The Green Backyard Camera is great. The only problems are the small screws on each side to fix the angle. Perhaps you have to yous some glue to attach the camera to metal firmly.
Greatings from germany
Friedemann

(I have translated same of our pages into english, If there are mistakes, let me know)

A wedge would work for us too, and thank you for the information about the small screws.

During the week, all four eggs hatched and we now have 4 eyasses in Fellbach! Three of them hatched on April 10 and the fourth on on April 12.

These short blog posts contain pictures and videos:

April 10:
The first eyas hatched (https://falcommunity.de/das-erste-kueken-ist-da)
Feeding (https://falcommunity.de/1-fuetterung-des-ersten-kuekens)
Two hungry beaks (https://falcommunity.de/zwei-hungrige-schnaebel)

April 11:
Breakfast (a starling) for three (https://falcommunity.de/fruehstueck-fuer-drei)

April 12:
The "big" three are hungry (https://falcommunity.de/die-3-grossen-haben-hunger)
The quartett is complete (https://falcommunity.de/das-quartett-ist-komplett)

April 13:
Quite the task for Falco (https://falcommunity.de/da-hats-der-papa-schwer)

Cheers
Baerbel

Here is a quick update from Fellbach.

Today (May 1) our four eyases were banded up on the roof - they don't have names (yet) but we have 3 girls and 1 boy with all them proclaimed to be in good health and very well fed (no wonder with as efficient a hunter as their dad! Falco brings food, which Perennelle promptly takes from him and feeds to the eyases as seen in this video-compilation (https://falcommunity.de/fleissiger-jaeger))

Here are some pictures one member from our team got during our stay on the roof:
https://falcommunity.de/bildergalerie/falken-cam-galerie?sgdg-path-377d77ec=1oqdEHJ0jN0zX3duptoDN5nfMBuXAVGrE (https://falcommunity.de/bildergalerie/falken-cam-galerie?sgdg-path-377d77ec=1oqdEHJ0jN0zX3duptoDN5nfMBuXAVGrE)

I got some video snippets:

Links to a few short videos I shot during the hour or so we were up on the roof:
Video #1 - Getting the eyasses out of the nestbox (http://youtu.be/jvZiR0jKTBs)
 
Video #2 - Banding while being watched (http://youtu.be/Cg4lsSR1Uts)
 
Video #3 - Getting the bands - resistance is futile (http://youtu.be/8KGGP11JN9Q)

Video #4 - Back into the nestbox (http://youtu.be/BwpQ8x73NXg)

Cheers
Baerbel

P.S.: I don't know why the video links only show up with lots of "white" space inbetween. In the preview I see proper links (even with the embedded video) but after posting it looks differently and when I edit the post again, the link to the video got changed from https:// to http:// (this change might actually be the reason why e.g. Firefox then doesn't display the video properly - we have that issue on Skeptical Science as well whenever embedded videos still go to http instead of https)

The formatting of your post looks fine here. I suppose it could be due to the browser I'm using.

Extraction of eyases without hard hats and brooms? Where are the parents?

Perennelle and Falco were circling and screaming over/around the roof. She almost landed once or twice on the security fencing put up by the building crew but thought better of it.

In the meantime we have a blog post with a video compilation on our homepage:
https://falcommunity.de/falkenkueken-beringt-teil-2

She might be a bit more aggressive in the future. I'd invest in some head protection if I were those guys.

I love the nest box door latches. We should get one to replace the latch on the Times Square box.