An Audubon kind of reality show....
05/27/2010
The pair and chick, with a view of the outskirts of Bergen, from http://tjeld.uib.no/
...is playing out on the rooftop of the science building at the University of Bergen in Norway, where a group of biologists and computer wizards have installed an HD webcam not far from a roof-nesting European oystercatcher.
It’s true that birdcams are not that uncommon, and for that matter, neither are roof-nesting oystercatchers, at least not in Europe. Aberdeen, Scotland has more than 200 nesting pairs. What makes this particular set up so captivating is the seamlessness of the streaming and the incredible detail provided by the camera.
You can see tiny raindrops beading up on the female’s feathers (this is coastal Norway, after all), and you can practically feel the fluff on the one chick that has already hatched. I like watching the chick try to squirm its way under the adult’s wing to get warm, and the way the adult settles itself on the one remaining egg (which sadly, probably won’t hatch).
Arild Breistøl, one of the biologists and IT wizards who helped set up the project, told me that oystercatchers have been nesting on this particular roof since 1999. Biologists installed the first webcam in 2005. This year the group got a grant from the university to buy the HD webcam, the results of which are visible at the click of a mouse.
The nesting pair has taken on a bit of a celebrity status in Norway after the national broadcasting corporation, NRK, ran a story about them. There was even a naming contest for the pair. The winners were Kjell (the male, pronounced “tshell”) and Kjellaug (the female, “tshell-awg”), Norwegian names that sound very similar to the Norwegian name for oystercatchers, which is tjeld (pronounced “tcheld”). These birds are also into social networking, where on their Facebook page they have more than 1,000 mostly Norwegian followers.
The best is that the long spring days in Bergen, with sunrise at about 4:30 a.m. and sunset at 10:40 p.m., negate the time difference between Norway and North America. That means American webcam viewers can watch this oystercatcher family raise their young, too.
Oystercatcher update
Anyone who logs on to the Oystercatcher webcam now will most likely just see one egg, abandoned by the parents. The gang that created the website says the oystercatcher family is still wandering the roof, so if you get lucky you may see a downy ball of fluff pursued by two elegant parents clad in their best black and white.
Biologists from the University of Bergen will soon take the one egg away to see what went wrong -- whether it was just unfertilized or if the chick actually died or there were developmental problems. It has been an unusually cold spring in Norway, so temperatures may have played a role in the egg's demise. If you thumb through the pictures that have been posted from the webcam from this year, you'll see one of the parent oystercatchers covered with snow!
June 2 update on the oystercatcher cam
Biologists have been up on the roof of the science building to band the baby oystercatcher that is still living up there. The family is alive and well and running all over the roof, with the parents bringing worms up from the ground to feed their chick. The camera on the roof has been moved to show a nesting common gull -- not as colorful or interesting as the oystercatchers, perhaps, but a bird show nonetheless.
photo courtesy http://tjeld.uib.no/