Phoebe Webcam up and running

Paul and I got the Phoebe webcam up and running this week at work. New cables and adapters arrived on Tuesday so I hooked it all up and when I looked at the computer I could see there was an egg. Two days later there was still only one egg so I was a little worried. We went to change the angle of the camera to get a better image of the nest but it didn't seem to make a difference until we realized the images were not refreshing. We reset everything and poof, there were magically three eggs! That means by a stroke of luck I got the camera up exactly on day one of egg laying! The second egg must have been laid yesterday the third this morning. The photo above is of the three eggs. We thought we had it all working but at about 3:45 yesterday it lost signal again. Paul re-set it at 8:00 in the morning today and there was a phoebe on the nest! It was there for maybe 30 seconds and when it left there were four eggs! We can't say for certain that it laid it right then but it seems likely as she doesn't seem to ever return to the nest unless she is laying eggs as she is not incubating them yet.

The photo below is a live shot it is updated every 20 seconds and the blog just grabs the current image. It will not refresh unless you re-load the blog or go to the actual Cornell website and watch there. We are doing this in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Hopefully the plague of bad technology that cursed us last year will not continue.