Alcoa Davenport's Bald Eagle Nest

Education & T-Shirts

We have made a couple of updates to the information on the opening page of the Alcoa EagleCam site above. In addition, we have a couple of links some people might be interested in checking.

The first link is to a site created by the Bettendorf, Iowa, school district in conjunction with an Alcoa Foundation grant to create learning modules based on eagles and the Alcoa EagleCam. Educators and others around the world are encouraged to check this out and use the modules if you like them.

The second link is to a site we have created with a local vendor to make a limited number of Alcoa EagleCam shirts and other items available for purchase (just in time for Christmas). A portion of the sale of each item will go to a fund we will use for a couple of local non-profit organizations. One organization is focused on riverfront access and the other is a local museum now conecting kids to STEM (Science, technology, engineering and math) education.

We hope you find both of these links interesting and helpful.

Video and Sound

We seem to have worked through the software issues and now have the sound working along with the video. Hopefully the system will be a little more stable, at least for a while. I try to post as we have some news, or to keep some of the comment strings from getting too long. We have had a lot of rain here in the last week or so. It would be good to have a few days to dry out now.

Testing Underway

On Friday we were doing some testing of some different things with the video feed. Most of that was supposed to be transparent to all of you, but somehow at the end of the day the regular feed went offline. The test feed is still running and I can tell you everything is fine with the nest. I saw one of the eagles in the nest this morning working with some small sticks. I'm not sure if we will be able to restore the regular feed before Monday. I hope everyone has a good weekend.

A Couple of Things

I wanted to give you an update on the sound and clear up a couple of other points.

The sound has not worked since we installed the new camera. It is not clear if it is a software issue or a hardware issue. We are hoping to have it resolved in the next couple of weeks. If we have to go back up to the nest, we need to do that before the weather turns cold and stays cold.

Some of you have asked about the 15 minute timeout on the feed. I have discussed this before, but it is a feature we have added. While we know some people want to stay connected all day, Alcoa is paying for the data feed required to stream this video. We are happy to provide the feed, but we don't want to pay for data when it is not really being used. That means those of you who want to stay connected will have to continue to refresh or restart your feed. If we can come up with a different process, I will let you know.

I see the comments about the new/young eagle in the nest today. I did catch a glimpse of the live feed at one point this morning. I do not believe the visitor today is connected to Liberty and Justice. The first eaglets since they have been using this nest were in March of 2010 (6 months before we installed the camera) and they had two eaglets that year. Those two would be about 2 1/2 years old now and not likely to have the white head or tail feathers yet.

Happy viewing everyone!

Mediacom

Our mediacom internet went down on Saturday. I may not have anyone in until Monday to reset the feed.

Welcome to Autumn

The camera is back online and looking very good. Like some of you, I have now seen both of the parents a couple of times since the camera started working again. As you all know, we do not have audio at this point. I am told it is a software issue as a result of the new camera. We will continue looking for a solution because we all know how much the sound adds to watching this site.

 

I still hope to add a couple of links to the website in the next week or so. One will be a link where you can purchase a couple of items like t-shirts or key chains. The other link will be to some educational materials developed this summer by the Bettendorf Community School District with a grant from Alcoa Foundation. The modules are for a variety of age levels and in areas of science, art and writing and all are based on eagles and observing them via the Alcoa EagleCam.