New Bird Cam: Great Blue Heron

Cornell just added a new web cam to their website. If you were having fun watching the Red Tailed Hawks, you might also enjoy this very different kind of bird. The Great Blue Herons have their own web-cam, two cameras in fact, so you can watch from a couple of different angles! This can be such a wonderful way to learn about different kinds of birds. It's a fine example of positive use of new technology.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/page.aspx?pid=2433

Here is what they say about it:

Cornell Lab eNews Flash
Great Blue Herons Join Our LIVE Nest Cam Roster

A Great Blue Heron nest in a massive white-oak snag outside our office is our newest live-streaming nest camera. We'd like to invite you to watch along with us as these magnificent birds begin their nesting activities for the year. 

The Great Blue Herons have nested in this snag for the last four years. We can see the nest from our staff lounge, and in years past we've enjoyed guessing when the eggs would hatch, watching for the day the chicks' little beaks first appear over the nest rim, and following them as they grow to four-foot tall adolescents. This year you'll be able to watch their progress from virtually inside the nest. 

The herons returned to the nest in mid-March and soon began courting: bringing twigs, standing side by side in the nest, clattering their bills, and nipping at each other. To get good views of these large birds, we've installed two cameras that stream simultaneously, one from above the nest and the other at nest level. The lower camera can record even in dark conditions and streams all night long. 

Last night at around 7:30 p.m., the heron laid her first egg! Tune in to keep watching for the next eggs. Great Blue Herons typically lay eggs every two days, sometimes three, until the clutch is complete. After that it will be 25–30 days before the chicks hatch, and they will spend another 7–8 weeks in the nest before they fledge. We hope you'll join us as we watch this all unfold!

As with our Red-tailed Hawk nest camera, we've put the heron camera onto a temporary page at All About Birds so you don't miss the early action. The site will be live 24 hours a day and the upper camera's video can be streamed in HD. You can also watch on mobile devices such as smartphones and iPads. A full-featured BirdCams site will launch in late April with more birds.

We've enjoyed having these herons outside our windows in years past, and we hope you enjoy them too!