It is that time of year again and we are anxiously awaiting the return of our wood duck. There has been no activity inside the house to this date. Last year, we guess she arrived around April 19-20th. We hope to see her come crashing into the house any morning now.
There are some new changes this year that we are very excited about. First and foremost, is the fact that we have installed all new equipment. Due to a very generous donation from the Albertville Lions, we were able to purchase a new camera and wireless system. While we have some lighting issues to work through, the camera and the system give us many more options and capabilities.
Secondly, we have a second party hosting the live feed. PixController Inc. and their CEO, Bill Powers, have generously provided us with the ability to send our live feed to them for free. PixController is a company out of Pennsylvania and they were the ones behind the technology for the Lily the Bear project this winter in Ely, Minnesota. They had a camera looking into the den and were able to see the birth and parenting of a black bear and her cub.
PixController will then take our live wood duck feed and post it on a website called Wildearth t.v. We will embed this feed on our district website just like last year. Your view should be greatly improved and reliable.
A big thanks goes to Roger Bovee and Ryan Panning from the district tech department. They made the contact with PixController and took care of all the equipment and correspondence. Roger designed a new top for our wood duck house and successfully wired the system to our solar power. They continue to both give a lot of donated time to this project.
The live feed will not start until the hen arrives. We will keep you posted but check in daily as we hope she comes any day. Of course, there is the chance that she or any of her offspring will not return but we are choosing to think positively and expect her arrival any minute.
Finally, we hope to use one of old cameras in an inner courtyard at my elementary school. If you look through the videos you will see a Make Way For Ducklings video. The hen mallard is back to the same courtyard and sitting on a new batch of eggs. We hope to use the new cameras to broadcast the action throughout our schools and get some good video clips for our website.
That is all for today and lets hope she makes it back for another exciting Spring!
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We live in Clearlake, CA right across the street from the lake. Every year we have a pair (male & Female) show up on our front lawn. I named them "George & Gracie" after George & Gracie Burns. I looked into what ducks eat and they love rice cakes (I figured the rice cakes are already 'puffed' so it can't expand in their system - besides they love it). It seems that they only show up at our door step when it rains. I was just courious if there was a reason for this.
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