Streaming Cam Back Up... Strange Bird Story...
First things first... The eBirdseed.com live streaming bird cam is back up and running again... To date we've had 21,620 hits on that cam alone.
(We had about 4,000 on the first web camera.) As time goes on I'll experiment with ways to get the rig back outdoors and improve the image quality significantly without exposing the hardware to Mother Nature's wrath. (The plan is to have several video camera cables available for the single cam... One connection will be to the current backbone of our inside configuration, and another will function as our good-weather outdoor hookup... All we have to do is bring down the entire system, unplug the vid from one cable and hook it to the other, and then reboot everything. (Think of a single lamp that can either be connected to a 15' extension cord or to a one-hundred footer.) Whoopee! I get to play with a soldering iron and cables and jacks and stuff!
Putting the technical aside, Mrs. CCA and I went to a Super Bowl party tonight, and we struck up a most interesting conversation with a woman who had a rather strange encounter with a large bird. She said that she first spotted the creature when it was staring at her through one of her windows. She said that it was only about 8' away at the time... To make this more intriguing, she said that after she left for work, the same bird (or similar ilk) appeared two towns away at a traffic light. Her description was that it was big, and brownish in color... My guess was that it was a turkey, but she believed otherwise. She was of the idea that it was some sort of raptor - a hawk or even an eagle. That certainly is possible... In any event, the moment was too transfixing to warrant a dash for a camera... So we may never know. But it goes to show that even in the midst of a great Super Bowl, the topic of birds is never too far away...
See you by the feeders,
CapeCodAlan
Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding
Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding
