looduskalender.ee

With statistics from EENet we can now make some preliminary outlines of the use of our winter cameras. The Eagle Camera was set up in Northwestern Estonia around November 14, on a site where white-tailed eagles are fed for the third year with the purpose of reading their rings.
The Pig Camera is working for the second winter near Tartu, and was particularly popular with our eastern neighbours last year. During the past season the Pig Camera collected more than 3,5 million viewers ... This year we have the camera working from December 10 (January 18 last year).

Altough the Eagle Camera has been working for a considerably longer period this season, the interest for the boars has been clearly greater. The difference in numbers of viewers is roughly tenfold: when the Eagle Camera on peak days (during the holidays) collected 3000 viewers, then those clicking on the Pig Camera link were nearly 30 000 in a 24-hour period.

Eagle fans can only watch recorded clips in the dark hours.

Why there is such difference, the viewers themselves should know best. The boar show is like a soap opera – whenever you start watching, the thing is understandable. On the Eagle Camera often the only thing to see is the weather in Northwestern Estonia, that is, managing to catch the actors on camera is trickier. The short daylight period probably emphasizes the differences, the boar site can be watched day and night (and there is nearly always something to be seen), but in the Eagle Camera for nearly 3/4 of the period darkness reigns. The global time zones also contribute to the differences in viewing.

In our forums too there are about half as much more posts on the boars (over 2000 by now). There are also themes not directly connected to the cameras. Registered Forum users at the moment are 99.
At present the Forums of the Looduskalender are in English. The administration of the Forums requires a certain amount of voluntary work, and so we have not had the resources to open an Estonian version. But we will put an effort in finding a solution with a multi-language forum including Estonian in the future where all can easily meet.