Watching Washington's Wildlife on the Internet

Ever wonder how folks who DON’T have a Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary watch wildlife from their easy chairs at home?

Ever think it would be over a computer screen via the Internet and the World Wide Web?

Believe it or not, with live videocameras and website transmissions, that’s the way the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is now helping people view wildlife.

The “WildWatchCam” program started last February with a camera set-up on a bald eagle nest in a tree on private property near Kent in northwest Washington. WDFW’s Watchable Wildlife program biologist Chuck Gibilisco enlisted the help of Timothy K. Brown, a wildlife and special camera technology expert, and electronics and optical firm B.E.Meyers.

Videotapes of a returning pair of eagles were made, providing an unobtrusive way for biologists to learn more about the private lives of the species. The eagles had been incubating two eggs when the video transmission to WDFW’s Internet website went on line May 5; on May 7 the first hatchling emerged from an egg and on the 10th the second hatched.

The Internet website transmission of the image refreshed every five seconds, providing an almost live, moving picture of the birds’ activities. More than 6,000 “log-ons” were made to “EagleCam” each day by persons fascinated with the opportunity to watch an eagle family grow.

The parent eagles dutifully fed their offspring, which doubled in size within two weeks. They averaged three fish and two crows per day. By mid to late June the eaglets were doing a lot of wing-flapping and the parent birds were building the sides of the nest up to keep them from falling out. Over the course of the summer, the videocamera recorded a chickadee landing on an eaglet’s head, a squirrel from the “basement” of the nest scrambling into the nest (and out very quickly!), hummingbirds checking out the arrangement, and many other happenings. First flight came on July 31 when one of the eaglets accidentally slipped out of the nest and glided to a lower branch of the tree; by early August both youngsters were fledging.

“EagleCam” came to an end this season when one of the eaglets knocked the camera out of position in mid-August. Coincidentally, that was about the time WDFW was ready to debut its next “Wild Watch Cam” with equipment set up on a colony of very rare bats near Spokane by urban wildlife biologist Howard Ferguson.

“BatCam” is a live picture of a maternal colony of 125 to 150 Townsend’s big eared bats on the ceiling of an old cabin on private property in north Spokane County. The website picture, refreshed every 15 seconds, is not as clear as WDFW biologists had planned for this first year of the effort. But videotapes being recorded from the same camera are providing WDFW and an Eastern Washington University graduate student some excellent new information about the very rare species of bat.

The Internet connection, again made possible with the help of Brown and B.E. Meyers, is actually a bonus of the research. Only 12 maternity roosts (where adult females give birth and rear their young) of the species are known in Washington, only two on the eastside, and biologists need to know more to better protect them.

Ferguson found the bat colony last year while bird watching in the area. He contacted the owners of the property and learned that they were planning to remodel the structure, which would have excluded the bats. They agreed to hold off on their plans if an alternative for their needs could be found. With the help of Bats Northwest, Bat Conservation International (BCI), the National Fish and Wildlife Federation (NFWF), and Washington state’s Aquatic Lands Enhancement Account (ALEA), grants were secured to provide the landowners with another building to leave the bat cabin undisturbed.

At this writing, the bats had not yet migrated south and were still “on line” through “BatCam.” WDFW’s next “WildWatchCams” will feature salmon and seals. “SalmonCam” will provide an underwater view of coho salmon returning to WDFW’s Issaquah Fish Hatchery. “SealCam” will be set up on a seal haul-out site in Puget Sound.

“We’re learning a lot about wildlife behavior and about working with cutting-edge technology and equipment,” says Gibilisco. “But surprisingly, we’re learning just as much about people. We continue to marvel at the incredibly supportive feedback that we and the eagle nest site landowners received from people from all over the state and country. Many of them really got hooked on watching and e-mailed lots of questions and comments. We also received many needed financial contributions and purchases of personalized license plates – the two sources of funding that make WildWatchCam possible.”

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