Some (or all) of you may have noticed that the camera streams are currently down. Five days ago there was a power glitch in the water tower which has dropped power to the tower itself. The IT department and local campus Facilities dept are looking into the issue and hopefully we’ll have the streams back up shortly (we’ll harass them until they’re back!). The weather in Orange today is dull, drizzly and cold, with visibility at about 50 meters and chilly winter nights already here. No sign of Diamond and Bula at the moment; hopefully they’ve found a quaint bed-&-breakfast establishment somewhere to keep warm.
We’re putting together a paper outlining FalconCam Project’s current and future plans, in regards to the direction the Project should take, capabilities, software and hardware, as well as a projection about where we want to be in 3-5 years time. Cilla also has her head down trying to put together some papers on peregrine behaviour and feeding patterns, and we’re entertaining prospective future benefactors to help us get to where we want the Project to be, in conjunction with this forthcoming paper which we’ll make public when published. At this point we must heartily thank our extremely generous contributors over this past season; their financial contributions have enabled us to cover costs for recent eggshell testing, licencing and repairs, and provided a good start towards our future audio/visual budget. Your kind contributions are appreciated and they allow us to continue FalconCam Project.
There’s one issue left to face now – climb the 50m-high tower to clean out and maintain the eyrie… any volunteers?! …
Me! Pick me!
Am just watching the ledge-cam. Diamond looks quite bedraggled and scruffy. Nasty weather or has she had an altercation with something?
Hi Sue,
Cilla’s overseas at the moment but I’ll get her to reply to you soon as she returns. Apologies for the lack of camneras over the past few days. One of the campus Facilities staff found the right switch and we’re back up again. Yesterday (Saturday, local time) was indeed a filthy cold, wet, and windy day. Today has improved but I’m sure both peregrines will be feeling the chill; winter in Orange has arrived! We’ll keep an eye on both adults though, in case something altogether has occurred. Thanks for your msgs.
Re: “permission to band”. We’ve had lots of fun with CSU authorities in understanding the Project, how it runs, what we’ve achieved and where we want the Project to go. Consequently we operate entirely under our own steam, but using the university’s data network to bring cameras out to the world. Banding is another issue we’ve faced. Cilla is a qualified bander and through simple courtesy, we’ve notified CSU of our intentions, but have been knocked back (“animal ethics”?). We will meet with them and explain & demonstrate processes at some point. The pressure to band young birds though is paramount and we will go ahead this coming season, regardless, as we need the stats and identification. Thanks for your comments; great to have you on=board as a supporter!