Birds on film

March 27, 2019 5:54 AM

The Sierra Club has a list of six bird webcams where you can watch the great adventures of spring. Among others, you can spy on cranes, whose vocalizations entertain even when the sky is black and there’s little to see; puffins, whose antics one viewer described as “perfection”; and a variety of species on the Mississippi River, although passers-by at that site can be less cooperative in spring. If these migration-cams aren’t exciting enough for you, perhaps you’d prefer to watch the nesting behavior of barred owls, bald eagles, or the evocatively-named Hellgate ospreys.
posted by eirias (21 comments total)

I swear to God, I went to the Puffin Cam just now and they are GOING AT IT LIKE CRAZY. PuffinSex FTW.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 6:59 AM on March 27, 2019 [4 favorites]

Sadly, there are no puffins on the puffin-cam at the moment just what appear to be three guilemots.
posted by vacapinta at 7:17 AM on March 27, 2019

My whole office is obsessed with UT's Falcon Cam -- the peregrine called Tower Girl is sitting on four eggs right now. Every now and then you can catch her mate spelling her so she can go hunt! She's been nesting on the UT tower for several years but has never hatched an egg successfully, so we're all crossing our fingers for her.
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:42 AM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

And the Hellgate osprey cam currently has a northern flicker(?) on it. Shenanigans, I say!
posted by tobascodagama at 7:58 AM on March 27, 2019

My bird cam of choice continues to be the Pitt Peregrine Falcon Nest Cam, perched near the top of the tallest educational building in the Western hemisphere. Hope, the resident female, has a history of eating at least one of her chicks each year as it hatches so viewer beware - but as far as I can recall she's always raised at least a couple, and this year she's laid five eggs so odds seem good there will be chicks to watch about a month from now.
posted by DingoMutt at 8:28 AM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

Ooooh, my (well, not "my") building has a falcon cam.

They put a monitor in the lobby that shows the feed. In color. It'll make for some gruesome mornings in a few months, when breakfast for the babies is a pigeon.
posted by Gorgik at 8:54 AM on March 27, 2019

The Crane one is set up a few miles down the highway from my hometown. The bad weather patterns this year interrupted the normal migration patterns. We have the same general number of cranes, but instead of being spread out over 6 weeks or so, they're mostly all showing up at once. It's made what is already impressive into something pretty amazing this year to see.

Oh, and right now we have tens of thousands of Canadian Geese at the same time. We are awash in migrating birds right now in Central Nebraska.
posted by jkosmicki at 9:19 AM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

MOAR BIRD CAMS PLEASE
posted by Melismata at 9:19 AM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

Right now puffins are still making more puffins.
posted by sukeban at 10:06 AM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

I like following the progress of the DuBois Falcon Cam at UMass, Amherst (no excitement yet; it's been cold here). New nesting pair. No successful eggs last year. Fingers crossed for this year!
posted by carrioncomfort at 10:11 AM on March 27, 2019

I'm a big fan of the Harrisburg Falcon Cam. Color! Night vision! 24-hour falcon viewing!
posted by blnkfrnk at 10:50 AM on March 27, 2019

PG&E may be in the news for a bunch of crappy things lately, but they've been consistently good hosts to the Peregrine Falcons of downtown SF. 3 eggs from a clutch of 4 hatched about a week ago. They are still tiny white fuzzbutts!
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:29 AM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

That's it. I am going to sponsor a grad student to study how birders have taken over the entire public face of conservation and how we can get city kids to care about other genera.

Look out for my new spider-cam and habitat-cam, coming soon!
posted by fshgrl at 12:46 PM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

More than enough cams to ensure I get no work done at the office. And I will be outside bird watching so no work done at home, either. I'll clean my house in July when it's hot and muggy.
posted by narancia at 1:52 PM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

I love the idea of bird cams! Thank you for posting this.

I was a young adult in the 1980s, so I'm thinking that this post should have been titled Gulls On Film.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 3:33 PM on March 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

The UC Berkeley campanile is hosting the Berkeley falcons. Two cameras, three eggs so far.

The Richmond Osprey are back.

And the Presidio bird cam is now on a Great Horned Owl nest, after they evicted the Red-tailed Hawks.
posted by gingerbeer at 4:30 PM on March 27, 2019

Also the San Jose peregrines nesting on City Hall.
posted by gingerbeer at 4:33 PM on March 27, 2019

you guys aren't joking with these puffins
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:49 PM on March 27, 2019

These bird cams are nice. I watch giraffes literally all over the world on live cams.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:30 AM on March 28, 2019

Those damn puffins are back at it again!! GET A ROOM FFS
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:32 PM on March 29, 2019

Check out this special delivery on the osprey cam!
posted by gingerbeer at 7:18 PM on April 5, 2019 [1 favorite]