New Peregrine cam in Australia

[MAK]

 

[Donna]

Good news. Something to watch in our down time! 

[Annette]

FalconCam Project ISP server maintenance due

Just been informed by our wonderfully reliable and top notch hosting service provider that there will be maintenance on our server and the site will be down for roughly 3-4 hours, 6th August, 2012, between 1am and 6am (Aust EST).

Hope this doesn’t affect anyone for too long! Apologies to everyone, but we will have an even more stable website afterwards…… Swift & Beau thank everyone!! Cheers, NetRegistry (Australia)!!

[Annette]

FalconCam camera glitches

Apologies to all viewers who have been trying to view the live cameras recently. We’re trying to iron out glitches to the stream coding after some big network changes at CSU which have meant a re-write of some of the important bits of code to stream outwards. Frustratingly we can see the streams inside CSU but that doesn’t translate to vision on the outside world just yet. Hang in there and thanks for your patience.

It’s been a relatively quiet week up the tower (in that regard), with Swift spending most of her days here now, and the odd visit from Beau. Yesterday we caught some fascinating bowing in the eyrie itself when Swift arrived with Beau already in residence. We’ll begin to upload more video clips as they appear. Any time now we’re hoping to witness some peregrines mating but if they’ve indeed been busy they’re elusive this season!

We also appear to have ironed out our long term recording archives. At one point it appeared we were only retaining about 3 days of video/audio footage but we’ve since found we’re indeed retaining around 50-60 days at a time, which is ideal for research and statistical analysis. We’ve also just received Cilla back from her marathon overseas trip and can now begin to  put together objectives for this season’s events and records. Welcome home, Cilla!! Lots of stories to tell, no doubt!

[Annette]

Possible snow for Orange

The bad weather front is passing over Orange as I write, promising snow and sleet for today and tonight; time will tell now as to how bad it will get but Swift has taken to her scrape and hopefully will remain there during the worst of it. In these stormy winds the concrete water tower is likely to gather momentum & sway a little – I’ve been up there before on wild windy days and watched a puddle on the floor swing back and forwards, which would explain the motion sickness on descending 2 hours later on!! It shouldn’t bother Swift though, who appears to be happy to stay close to home at the moment.

Swift hiding from the snowstorm

[Donna]

Looks like Swift laid an egg during the snowstorm.

Thanks Kris for the heads up!

Keep it warm!!

[Annette]

The Project’s 5th season has commenced!

Thanks to all our viewers who, over the weekend, spotted the first egg for this, our 5th observing season. It’s great news but alarming timing as the egg was laid at bang-on 8.40pm (AEST) Friday night 17th August, right in the middle of a fairly big snowstorm in Orange. It’s two weeks earlier than we were expecting but it’s great news all the same. And with a -4degC (+-24.8degF) overnight it’s not ideal conditions for Swift and Beau right now. A sunny week ahead, albeit freezing nights, will be a challenge.

Apologies still for the nest camera streaming capability. It seems to be providing the image but not streaming properly. I’ll be running more tests today and tonight. I’ll also put up the video clip of the egg-laying from Friday night (with a link) soon too. We may have to reduce the nest cam image size to try and improve streaming. Stay tuned!!

1st egg, 5th season, laid 17th Aug

[carly]

Anca and Beth over at BCAW just caught Egg #2 being laid!!! 

[Annette]

5th season’s first video clips available

Finally loaded up a couple of this weekend’s video clips as we get set for another fascinating couple of months ahead with Swift, Beau and hopefully some new young eyases. The first clip shows poor Swift laying her first egg on Friday evening, and the second clip gives you a daylight colour view of the first egg from our great Hi-Def camera mounted in the eyrie. Swift has beaten us to obtaining the next HD camera so that will have to wait until we have access to the eyrie later this season.

We’re 2 weeks early, and this egg was laid in the evening. No doubt the extreme weather Orange has been experiencing recently has thrown most patterns out the window. Indeed last season’s three youngsters headed away very early in the season.

Apologies again for the uncertain camera streaming. We’re going to try some big coding changes in the next few days. Ironically the HD camera currently runs nicely on some Android browsers, but seems to halt on most mainstream browsers!

First egg laying
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEme6lsj5DQ

egg daylight colors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlkbmYaytuc

[Annette]

No.2 is here!

The second egg was laid at about 11.40pm last night, again in sub-zero (celsius) temperatures.

Our surveillance server is pushing hard at the moment with so much activity in the eyrie and we’re nursing recordings and archives out of it. The streaming server is going to be worked on as often as time allows each day as it appears the streaming is indeed working but only to some combinations of hardware and browser. We’re also looking at testing alternative technologies at the moment; something more robust.

Swift and two eggs, 20th Aug



The family’s growing again

With today’s excitement at Swift’s overnight effort to pump out a 2nd egg there’s more activity in and around the eyrie, up the “Concrete Hilton�. Today Beau flew in with lunch, which he left out on the so-called feeding tree, just down below. Swift exchanged places and Beau took his turn. He’s much smaller in stature (about 1/3rd smaller) but can handle 2 eggs well. Come the 3rd egg or more it’s always amusing to watch him struggle to fit them underneath, let alone when they turn in to writhing furry wrigglers soon!

Here’s a brief clip of the luncheon changeover, with Beau in place before Swift returns after dining out.
http://youtu.be/kmTjH0qwAWg

[Donna]

   Thanks Annette, fun for us this Fall!

[MAK]

  Thanks Annette, fun for us this Fall!

 

[Annette]

And then there was one

Sad news, caught on camera yesterday at 3.24pm(AEST), when video and pics show the loss of one of our precious eggs. Beau had been sitting for quite a while, when Swift arrived back. But as Beau got up to vacate the scrape, one of the eggs somehow adhered itself to his chest and the following pics show him leaving with the egg well & truly stuck. One guess is that it was already cracked and leaked on him, to cause the adhesion. Swift didn’t seem at all perturbed by the change in roll call but it’s a sad moment for all of us. The brief video clip of Beau’s inadvertent egg theft can be seen here…
Beau inadvertently losing an egg

The lost egg disappearing


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdpOVqFXHso#ws
Apologies again for the inconsistent video streaming from the nest camera. We’re pretty sure it’s a bad combination of latest software versions for our VLC, Flowplayer and  Flash versions on some platform, because almost frustratingly, all ongoing tests using an Android phone have been 100% successful, and sometimes we can get streaming via the likes of Safari etc, but Firefox seems to halt now? We’re looking at alternative streaming technologies (on a budget) to get us through this vital period. Bear with us for now...

[Donna]

How tragic. Hope this one will hatch.    We all know one is fun!

[MAK]

What a shame! One can definitely work out well as we can attest to here in Rochester!