looduskalender.ee

 

Latvian camera view. Click on image for direct stream watching.

Estonian camera view. Click on image for direct stream watching.

 

In connection with the joint activities of Estonia and Latvia (ESTLAT Eagles Cross Borders) this year we maintain a white-tailed eagle camera in Estonia (Linda and Sulev’s nest) and have installed a new camera with all necessary appendages in Latvia, in the Kolka peninsula in the Talsi district. In Estonia the camera in the forest was running on February 16^th and in Latvia on February 8th. To open a stream watchable by all however needed much more work at the transmission masts, particularly on the Latvian side, because an LMT tower with direct visibility was 15 km away and several different technical solutions had to be tested. The Estonian transmission system had been damaged by weather and so we had to replace the transmission bridge in the EMT tower. Thus transmission from the nests could be watched from the Estonian nest beginning on February 17^th, and in Latvia we had the test stream active on March 7^th.

Sadly white-tailed eagles have not settled down for nesting in either nest. We were quite optimistic about the Latvian camera in early March because the WTE pair was building the nest nicely and lined it with soft hay – but then they disappeared and have not shown themselves again at the nest up to now. Most likely they have a new nest somewhere. The recent history of the Latvian nest is as follows - 2008 (2 young); 2009 (1 young); 2010 (1 young); 2011 (inhabited but no young, in autumn built up markedly higher). The menu of this eagle pair is rather special – as prey white stork has often  been found.

The situation was very similar in Linda and Sulev’s nest last year, and in March this year Renno found the new nest ... But based on the last few days it seems that a buzzard pair may settle down in the Estonian WTE nest. In the Latvian nest no permanent new inhabitants have appeared as yet but forest species can often be heard calling there (the nest is on the outskirts of an old forest). Reports about Linda and Sulev’s earlier nestings are on the forum; the nest camera transmissions have been followed from 2009.
 

EMT is a project partner at the Estonian camera; the transmission bridge is located in their transmission tower. The signal goes on from there to the mobile tower of Elisa and from there to the Televõrgud cable. By way of the cable the video reaches the EENet server room, where it is decoded and split for viewers.

 

The Latvian camera system was prepared by the Latvian IT company Komerccentrs Dati grupa that helped the ESTLAT Eagles project teams to install the system in the forest and to configure the sound. From the forest the signal goes to the LMT mobile tower and from there by way of the LMT communication net to Internet and on to the EENet server. The final decoding of the video and stream splitting is again done at EENet.

 

The WTE cameras work in the framework of the ESTLAT Eagles Cross Borders project.