February 26, 2007
Cam Operations
We are just a day from our possible hatch date of February 28, so I wanted to take this time to discuss a few technical issues that could affect our cam watchers now that we are getting close to the big event.
The Website:
As webmaster, I normally change the "Nest Update" section of our cam pages no more than once a day unless something unexpected comes up, like an equipment malfunction or a weather problem. But on the hatching day, I will likely have two or three updates on the Eagle Cam page during a twenty-four-hour period, as I will try to let everyone know what is happening with the egg.
Because I will be posting more frequent updates during the hatching, I wanted to pass along a browser tip, especially for people who use AOL. If your Internet Service Provider uses proxy web servers (which AOL does), then your ISP is storing our web pages on their servers and may not always have the page with the latest update. In the past, I've had cam watchers using AOL who will often ask me questions that indicate to me that they are not looking at the newest cam page.
AOL users -- and anyone else -- can adjust for this by doing the following: Hold your CTRL key down while pressing the Refresh or Reload button on your browser's tool bar. This will normally force your browser to get the newest page from our web server, and it will show you the most recent "Nest Update" that I've posted. In the past, I've had AOL as my ISP, and this trick has worked for me.
This trick will also work if you think your browser is pulling the web page from the cache (temporary Internet files) that are stored on your home computer's hard drive. Just hold the CTRL key and click Refresh to force your browser to get the newest page. This is only necessary when you think I am updating the page more than once a day.
The Cam Equipment:
I also thought it might help to explain how we run the cams, since it's a topic we don't discuss much in the web log. Both the Eagle Cam and Osprey Cam use wireless technology because the cams are out in the field. What this means is that once the image is picked up by the camera, it is sent via cable to a microwave transmitter, which is located at the nest. The microwave transmitter then sends the image signal wirelessly to a microwave receiver at the Visitor Center where our computers are located. Then the image is sent to our Internet Service Provider using a satellite dish, and once it is on the web server, I can link to it on the Blackwater website.
Sometimes cam watchers might see blue bars running through the cam image like the one you see in this example. Most often these types of image problems are caused when something interferes with the wireless signal as it is being sent from the transmitter to the receiver. Anything can interfere with the signal, so we think the cameras actually do pretty well, since we don't see these types of bars or artifacts in the images very often.
When we have bad weather -- such as we've been having recently -- the snow/rain/ice/wind can also interfere with the wireless signal, and normally cam watchers will notice that the image stops updating when this happens. We've noticed that bad weather can also interfere with the proper operation of our satellite dish as well.
The weather report is calling for good weather during the possible hatching period later this week, so we'll keep our fingers crossed that for once the weather people are right. The warmer weather coming in should help dry things out.
As our old-time cam watchers know, the Friends of Blackwater have been very fortunate this season in that our camera equipment at the Eagle Cam nest has been running very well (knock on wood) as compared to our other seasons when we had technical issues. There are many problems that can occur with our cam setups because much of our equipment is exposed to the elements and because no machine is without problems. From the computers, to the wiring, to the microwave equipment, to the battery, to the solar panel, to the satellite dish, to the website itself, there are many areas where problems can occur. In addition, we've had natural problems like animals eating through our wiring, insects getting inside our battery box, lightning strikes blowing out our equipment, and birds sitting on or hitting our camera so hard they knocked it out of position.
The worst of these problems would be a camera malfunction.
If anything were to happen to the camera itself at this point, we would not be able to do anything about it until the chicks were over a month old, since disturbing the parents at this stage is out of the question. After the eaglets are born, they will not be able to control their own body temperatures for 2-3 weeks, so to be safe we would have to wait until they were about a month old before we would even think about going up to replace the cam.
Fortunately, this is not a problem because everything has been going well, but I just wanted to share the details of what we do, so our cam watchers can appreciate the technical issues we often face. When things are going well, it's easy to take for granted how good our cams are operating. But we've been running our raptor cams since 2001, and those of us who have been around from the beginning know that we should enjoy the times when everything is going great. :-)
Best of luck to our expectant parents this week. We truly hope that we have two eaglets to enjoy, as they are a lot of fun to watch.
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
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