Bird Cams Around the World

Diamond gets situated on the eggs before Xavier brings her dinner at 4:13 pm nest time on 9/5/17. Xavier stays to incubate while Diamond takes the prey out of the nest box. https://youtu.be/v1Jh2P7PNbM

Have a great day!

Molly

Sept 5
6 am in Oz
3 am in USA

Thanks Molly.
I have the cam up - but of course, I was AFK a few minutes and missed the Xchange. I wonder if she'll stop with 3 eggs. I keep these dates notes for myself. Once in awhile they are valuable. Wish I could access their blog.

Thanks for all the great pics!!!

If anyone can access the blog,
I'd like to read it.
I dont understand why I cant

From CSU site:
Night lighting progress
Published 8 September, 2017 | By Scott Banks
The good news is the new infrared illuminator has finally arrived, but the bad news is we can’t fit it until this weekend. A climb was attempted yesterday to check unit mounting etc and the current hole, where the 10 year old camera sits, is too high for the new IR unit, so a higher block needs to be built, and for the sake of speed and choreography a g-clamp will be used to fit the IR unit block to the ledge. Diamond seemed little phased yesterday with the deliberately planned noise behind the box but refused to leave her post. We have a piece of board that can go across the open camera hole while swapping the units across, so she’ll definitely hear us but will be spared the horror of seeing our human faces!

Hopefully tomorrow, Saturday, will see the IR unit fitted and working, and then we wait for night to see whether it’s too bright or not bright enough. It can shine to 20 metres in the darkness so we may melt the peregrines! Apologies to Diamond for the disturbance but it will be necessary, and apologies to our viewers. The two HD cameras can handle around .0001 lux (which is VERY, very dark) but the box isn’t lit by any ambient light at all so an IR unit is necessary.

Thanks Molly!
Hope you arent near the flood area!
I hope our Florida friends are all safe!

yay
now if they'd fix their blog ....

is it just me - or is Xavier funny?
He makes me laugh

Finally managed to get into CSU peregrine blog. Here are recent posts below. I dont think the embedded videos will make the paste here. I'll download them, post them to youtube and send links for those in a separate post in a minute. I wish Sscott and Cilla would link rather than embed the vids. Takes a long time and probably computer space toto download embedded.

Night light is in
Published 9 September, 2017 | By Scott Banks
The new infrared illuminator went in this afternoon. It was fairly straightfoward, although Diamond was put out with the disturbance. She came back after about 10 minutes though. The old illuminator had 12 LEDs but this new unit has 48 so we’re hoping it’s not going to be too bright. Darkness will tell, shortly now as I write. If it’s too bright we may be able to cover part of the illuminator to cut it down. Time will tell but this should give us overnight coverage again.

New IR illuminator
New IR illuminator
[ IR illuminator works! That’s good quality night vision but we might try to cover a few LEDs to cut the light down a little… Scott ]

Good boy, or odd chap?
Published 8 September, 2017 | By Cilla Kinross
Got back from Brisbane late Tuesday and just catching up with our pair. I’ve noticed that Xavier has stopped bringing in much food and is keen to help out with the incubation (something previous males were not that keen to do usually, especially with three eggs). He even arrived at one time having clearly just made a kill, with blood on his feet. That seems a bit cheeky, or is he stashing the prey for Diamond (see below)?

And he’s hanging about waiting for her to move so he can take over (at least I assume that’s what he’s up to….)….often he’s reluctant to move when she returns from her excursion. He seems very comfortable and is usually not having problems settling over the three eggs and on one occasion he stayed almost motionless incubating for four hours while Diamond was off gallivanting about, presumably hunting for herself.

On this occasion, however, he did have some problem settling. Thanks to Doug, who volunteered for me while I was away, for this image.

VIDEO 20170830 X strugges to settle


Xavier struggling to settle
And here Xavier appears to be trying to feed the eggs. Strange behaviour, indeed.


Does Xavier not know that eggs don’t eat?

VIDEO 20170830 X feeds eggs.

On one occasion, Diamond left with a prey (starling) that Xavier did bring – she then returned in four minutes minus prey. That’s odd. She can’t have plucked and eaten it in that time, so I can only assume it was either stashed in a tree or she dropped it and couldn’t find it. It was early in the morning so she must have been hungry. I’m going to try and find some time next week to have a look around the park as I think there must be a stash in the trees. It will be a bit like the proverbial needle unless I get lucky. Usually they use the box, but Xavier has seemed reluctant to do this.

The night light has arrived, but needs some mechanical adjustment as the stalk is too short. Scott is working on this and we should have light at night again early next week.

Xavier struggles to settle on eggs vid https://youtu.be/d4nmMQKYa28

Xavier feeds eggs video https://youtu.be/XyYRemzin8A