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Georg, Gunnar, Renno and Urmas from the Kotkaklubi (Eagle Club) installed the web camera at the Läänemaa black stork nest on March 27th. The mobile mast connections were completed only on April 21st. The nest is known from the year 2009; then three storks fledged there. In 2010 nesting failed, there were only egg shells on the ground under the nest in July. We do not know what happened. Local farmers know the nest already from the kolkhoz years.
The nest is quite far from roads, about 2,5 km as the crow flies. In the deep snow it was no simple task to bring batteries and solar panels to the site. Fortunately a local enterprise, Trias Holding OÜ, came to our help and carried out the whole transport from Soomaa to the nest and back again. After the end of the road where a car could be driven the transport went on by amphibious craft (without that the equipment could possibly have been brought to the nest site in one day, but no more work done). A video clip from the amphibious vessel journey is on this page (in the toughest parts filming was impossible, we had to make sure that we would not fall off the vehicle ourselves). When the camera was installed supports were also set to the nest since it sits on the dead branches of an old oak. The nest tree is at the edge of one-time forest felling area.

The technical solution is quite similar to that for our other web cameras.
By way of Mikrotik aerials the web camera signal reaches the Elisa mobile tower 11 km away and from there goes to the Televõrgud fibre-optic cable. Televõrgud forward the camera image to the EENet server where video decoding and distribution of the stream takes place. Power to the camera and the aerials in the forest is supplied by solar panels.

NB! To watch the video in full screen mode double click on the video screen that opens in the Media Player.If watching the mms stream does not succeed it may be worthwhile trying the web player which allows watching the camera image directly in your web browser (Silverlight add-on needed):

 

Helping with the enterprise are:

• Camera - Mobotix (Estonian representative - Beta Grupp OÜ)
• Aerials (MikroTik), cables, technical support - Kernel AS
• Transmission of signal to EENet server, work on towers - Televõrgu AS
• Distribution of stream, video storage, server space - EENet
• Solar power solution – TUT Department of Materials Science
• Transport - Trias Holding OÜ

• Sponsored by permanent stork cam observer Olev, a god father of Padis
... and all is watched and documented by the Looduskalender forum.