GREAT NEWS!  We have teamed up with the Eagle Mountain Kestrel Project, Legend Engineering, and a couple of other residents to bring you the Eagle Mountain Kestrel Cam.  We have picked one of the nesting pair of kestrels and have installed a webcam into their nesting box.  Shon Reed, an Eagle Mountain resident, has worked hard to get all of the elements needed to make it happen.  It should also be noted the Shon is a very excellent photographer, and you can see his work by going to his Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/shon_reed/

The Eagle Mountain Kestrel project is designed to help increase, and preserve the American Kestrel population in and around Eagle Mountain.  There have been a number of kestrel boxes placed around the city on public and private land.  Eagle Mountain city keeps an updated list of the location of these boxes:  http://www.eaglemountaincity.org/community/kestrel-boxes. Quail Run Farm currently has one of those boxes and is now helping the project spread the word with a 24/7 live webcam.  We are hoping to see this mating pair of Kestrels lay a clutch soon.

The purpose of this post is to give you a little insight into how the cam is setup, and the effort that was taken to bring it to you.  One of the unique things about this box is that we also have a 24/7 weather station about 200 feet away, this station is collecting the weather data to go along with the video feed.  You can view this weather data, by going to our Weather Underground feed (Station ID: KUTEAGLE19).

The nesting box is on top a 30 foot pole, that was made from repurposed 4X4s wedged between 2X4s on either side.

The height of the box, and the poles materials has made it difficult to check the box, and putting a webcam in the box would be impossible without the donated time of Brian and Jordan, and the use of equipment from Rocky Mountain Power.

Brian and Jordan donated their time, and Rocky Mountain Power allowed them to use a bucket truck to help install the camera after hours.  I want to thank Brian and Jordan for donating their time after work, and Rocky Mountain power for allowing them to use their truck when they were installing the camera.

 

After we ran power to the pole, and extend our Wi-Fi coverage, we were able to install the web cam.  The webcam was purchased for the project by Lonny Reed the owner of Legend Engineering in Heber City, a Civil Engineering, Survey and Land Planning company.

Once the camera was prepped for install, Brian went up in the bucket truck to install the camera. Lonny and the rest of us were on the ground looking at the camera to help Brian find the best angle after it was installed in the nest. Shon was out of town during the install, but was being constantly updated on the progress and sent the live feed so he also could give input on the install.

Eagle Mountain can now enjoy the views from the webcam.  We have the feed available to everyone on the Quail Run Website.  You can view the camera by going to this link:

https://quailrunfarms.com/kestrel/index.html

The page includes a place where you can leave your comments, and start a discussion on what is being seen.  You can even share your favorite photo from the webcam in the comments section.

Let us know what we can do to improve the project, as well as learn more about these beautiful and powerful birds.

It should also be noted that we had some other birds watching us while we were installing the camera.

Once we were done with the actual camera install, we needed to complete the configuration, get the website setup, and make sure that it could be accessed via the internet.