Golden eagle cam is up and running

Sisters Country is blessed with people who are always ready to pitch in, and get the job done. That's why the free cam streaming the life and times of a golden eagle nest is up and running again this year. To view it, visit www.GoldenEagleCam.com.

As anyone who has set up this kind of system will tell you, it isn't easy, and it does cost money. The money part is being taken care of by the East Cascade Audubon Society (ECAS), based in Bend. President of ECAS, Ken Hashagen, lives in the Sisters area and - being the birder he is - knows how exciting it is for anyone to open up their computer at breakfast-time and be able to watch a golden eagle feeding her babies breakfast.

Technical aspects of the project included building a website, and it took Tony Kay a lot of head-scratching to figure out - through trial and error - that the project needed a static IP address for the webcam to stream optimally.

That required signing up for a streaming service, and getting a separate Yellowknife account and dish that's dedicated to the Eagle Cam. (That's because, in this rural setting, Internet access is bandwidth-limited, and streaming the eagle cam requires between 100 and 300 GB/month, which is a considerable expense.)

Jim Hammond of the Sisters Astronomy Club is a whiz at adapting telescopes to look at things other than stars. He has the original camera that was first capturing the eagle images 14 years ago hooked to a Meade 1000 mm focal length telescope with a four-inch aperture and with an adapter converting it to about 600mm. The setup is about a quarter-mile from the nest, looking across Whychus Creek Canyon, where thermal effects can be quite dramatic, as the bottom of the canyon is about 150 feet below the line of sight.

Now the telescope and camera is streaming data to Yellowknife and out to you - with the invaluable assistance of Leslie Lawrence and Tony Kay, who babysit the whole electronic assembly.

This project began 14 years ago on land Janet Zuelke and Forrest Babcock owned, now owned by Leslie Lawrence. It was the tragic death of a newly hatched golden eagle that blew out of its nest that was the beginning of the only known golden eagle family video streaming around the world.

As Zuelke related the tragic story to her partner, Forrest Babcock - an optical engineer - they hatched the idea of setting up a telescope with a TV camera attached to the eyepiece to send an image to their home TV so they could watch the nest full-time.

Forrest put up a tent on the hillside below their home and used it as a shelter for his ingenious telescope and camera setup. In the meantime, Wolftree, a local conservation education group based in Sisters since 1994, got into the project and sent the video nationwide.

Janet and Forrest sold out, moved to another part of the Northwest and went on with life. But not before Forrest, with back-breaking dedication, built a beautiful gazebo on the hillside across the canyon from the eagle nest, and topped that off by hauling wheel-barrow after wheel-barrow loads of concrete, making a pier that comes up through floor of the structure, creating a solid base for the telescope/camera mounting.

When Wolftree sold out, that could have been an end to the eagle cam, except for Leslie Lawrence. She took one look at the gazebo, knew the story of Forrest and Janet's Wolftree eagle cam and asked Forrest to leave everything in place as she wanted to get it up and running again.

Last year, Jim Hammond of the Sisters Astronomy Club had a big telescope donated to the club that he thought would accept the TV camera and went to work. After countless hours of jury-rigging and finding things that didn't work, he finally hit the jackpot and captured an image that he could send to Lawrence's living room TV.

Leslie, with technical help from her side-kick, Tony Kay, jumped in and got the images streaming again. With supreme effort and money out of her own pocket, Leslie and her helpers contacted ECAS, who have taken over the long-term financial sustainability of the eagle cam.

The golden eagle cam Janet and Forrest started so many years ago is still streaming for the enjoyment and education of people world-wide who may have wondered what goes on in the life of a golden eagle - all thanks to residents of Sisters Country and the dedication of ECAS, who enjoy working together for the common good of everyone. Go to: www.GoldenEagleCam.com and enjoy... And if you like what you see, go to the ECAS website, www.ecaudubon.org to help defray the costs of operating the eagle cam.