The important news is, the OwlCam is in place! Well, it’s in *a* place. And it’s broadcasting! To my kitchen.
Baby steps!!!
We had an interesting day doing the install. Jason Williams (of Williams Audio Video & Security) and his son and able employee John had come out a week prior and put the cables in, and then Jason had crafted a really cool mount for the camera out of a piece of bike rack. But when he actually got up there and stuck his head (metaphorically) in the hole, we realized this nest is significantly deeper than we thought. And that meant that from either of the two most obvious camera mount locations we were getting shots of the outside of the hole and then a dark cavity, and nothing else.
Here, I did an amazing drawing to explain. You’re welcome.
In the first quadrant you see the tree, with a large entrance hole, and a smaller hole I think the chicks use to get out eventually. I had previously thought the floor of the nest was at the green line, but it’s more like the purple line.
Jason’s plan involved mounting the camera at position A. I had kind of envisioned something more like B, allowing room for babies to climb out.
Quadrant 3 represents my highly artistic rendering of the crappy view we were getting from A and B.
Finally, we pointed the camera actually *through* hole C, a tiny little knot right at the base of the nest cavity, and got a view more or less like the fourth quadrant. This has pros and cons; the camera will be on night vision most or all of the time, and we may end up with a lot of exciting shots of bird feet. But feet will tell us stuff, I think. And if it works out well, maybe next year we can afford a camera for higher up to watch comings and goings!
And now, drumroll, here’s what it looks like live! Please to envision it with bird feet. It’s going to ROCK!