Thursday, April 25, 2013

Bluebird Nest Cams

Have you ever wondered what really goes on inside a bluebird box? We see the parents flying in and out but what do the birds actually do inside the box after the door is closed again.

A mirror is used to look into the nests in each box to see if there are eggs, how many, if they've hatched, etc. The parent flies away when we do that and all we ever see are eggs or hunkered down babies. With a nest box cam, you can watch everything!

Nest box cams are special little video systems that you can set up and have it live stream everything that happens in the nest box. There are actually thousands of nest cams out there these days recording the activities of a wide variety of birds.

It is fascinating to watch the development of the babies from incubation to fledging (leaving the box). Some nest box cams even have infrared cameras and you can watch what goes on all night long.  It is amazing to watch the babies wake up and move off and on all night long. They do serious exercises in the boxes during the middle of the night as well. It can be quite addicting to watch nest box cams.

Since this is the Bluebird Trail Blog, I'll only give you a list of 4 bluebird nest cams.  Because the nest cams are scattered around the US, the nests/eggs/babies are in various stages of development. Be sure and keep checking back through the season because bluebirds (especially here in the south) tend to have 3 to 4 broods each year. The further north you go, the fewer broods (sometimes just 2) because the warm season is shorter.

Bluebird Nest Cam - Maryland

Bluebird Nest Cam - Washington (state)

Bluebird Nest Cam

Bluebird Nest Cam - Pennsylvania



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello,
Nice pictures, I love the bluebirds. We have alot of them in our immediate ares. I know you posted this back in April, did they all live? Got any pictures of the fledglings? Did you get a second cycle in the box?

sorry for all the questions. I just started a blog a few weeks ago and have a few pictures posted on bluebirds.

thanks,
Michael
Bluebirds Eating Live Mealworms