CrowCam Archives

Here is a permanent link to the most current live stream: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUxIqdJJpXBnjaEy5yq1wZQ/live Video history highlights: http://vixyandtony.com/crowcam.html --- Live view of backyard crows and squirrels, Seattle, Washington. The video feed is only live from sunrise to sunset each day, since crows and squirrels are diurnal. The most common species we see at this feeder are the northwestern crow, the eastern gray squirrel, the dark-eyed junco, and the Steller's jay. Use the video's "scrub bar" control, to scroll backwards into the video feed, to find recent visits by the critters. Note: The live stream may stop and restart at certain times of day, limiting how far back in the timeline that you can view. If the live stream seems to stop during the day, if it doesn't automatically restart itself after a moment, then try clicking on the permanent link above, and then try refreshing the page. --- We have installed a new feeder system to keep the seagulls out. We used to put food in bowls for the crows (they like puppy kibble), but after a while, the seagulls got the hang of it, and would eat all the crows' food before they could get any. The new feeder takes care of this. The feeder is a modification of an off-the-shelf "seesaw" counter-weighted design, which was originally designed for smaller chirpy birds: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001G17E7Y - The seesaw closes the food openings if anything too heavy lands on the perch. The feeder was originally designed to keep squirrels out of the birdseed, but crows and squirrels weigh about the same, and both of those species are welcome here. So we modified the feeder by replacing the chirpy bird perch with a platform for the crows and squirrels to land on, then added more weight to the seesaw's counterweight. Now the feeder's landing platform will accept the weight of crows and squirrels, while rejecting the weight of seagulls. This kept the seagulls away for several months, until one of them figured out it could land on the roof and bend over really far, and occasionally got a kibble or two. So we added a plexiglass extension to the roof to thwart it. Example of seagull frustration here: https://bit.ly/2KSayzW --- There is some custom script code to control and maintain this camera feed, and it is open source on GitHub: https://github.com/tfabris/CrowCam --- Here is a link to a TED talk by John Marzluff of the University of Washington, about research he has done with our local crows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fiAoqwsc9g --- Here are some links to a song that we wrote about our local crows: Lyrics: https://vixy.dreamwidth.org/794522.html Performance: https://bit.ly/32wgjtL --- Our band's web site: http://www.VixyAndTony.com

Curated by: CrowCam (316 videos)

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