looduskalender.ee

Stream for mobile devices: iPhone, iPad; Android, VLC

 

For the fifth season we opened the real-time transmission from the nest of white-tailed eagles Linda and Sulev.

 

 

Linda and Sulev abandoned their old nest and moved closer to the sea. On this site the tree carrying the nest is of poorer quality. The eagles have had to rebuild their broken nest at least twice already, but they evidently like the view better than at the old nest, and it is closer to their hunting grounds. Last year three eaglets were hatched in the nest; one of them perished before fledging. Urmas, from the Estonian Ornithological Society’s ESTLAT project  and Renno from the Kotkaklubi (Eagle Club) decided already at the summertime nest survey that the nest camera should be transferred to the new nest. We did so, with helping hands from newspaper Eesti Päevaleht (EPL) and IT company Kernel, and since December 12th we have every now and then had the opportunity to take a look at what is happening in the nest. The eagles have been seen on the nest from the beginning of February.

This time the camera system is arranged so that when darkness falls, all power consumers are switched off, and switched on again when daylight returns. This allows a significant reduction of power use, and we will not need to risk disturbing the nest life of the eagles with battery replacements. The solar panels work well when they are not covered by snow and the sun shines. With increased day length we will be able to transmit throughout day and night. Most of the old system had to be rebuilt in the new location, and hopefully it also turned out more stable than earlier. From the transmitting aerial on the nest tree there is a direct sightline to the Elisa mobile tower where the receiving aerial is located. From there the signal goes along the Televõrk cables to the  EENet server. In the server the image is multiplied for the thousands of viewers all over the world who want to share in what is going on in the nest. We use an economical power-efficient Mobotix camera.

 

From February 15^th, all human movements around a white-tailed eagle nest site are prohibited (without special permission) according to the environmental protection laws, and now is the right time to check that this is upheld: everybody has the chance to be an invisible Environmental Inspectorate official at this nest...

... but we hope that all goes well, and that we will see the first flights of the eaglets in July.

 

Using the stream from the nest elsewhere is not prohibited, but we ask potential users to please inform us in such cases (see contact information at the end of the page, or mail to urmas(at)kotkas.ee).

 

As always a great number of splendid and helpful people are part of the enterprise. The overall operation of the system is supported by the  ESTLAT programme by way of the Estonian Ornithological Society’s project "Eagles cross borders".

 

More information about what goes on in the nest is in the Looduskalender forum, the white-tailed eagle nest camera news and website of Estonian Ornithological Society.

 

Participating in the enterprise:

 

                          

 

 

Supported by ESTLAT program