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News Archive 2014

April 29 – 6:00 AM – The weather forecast for today is good (ten degrees cooler than yesterday, but still clear), so, with time flying as it is wont to do, my plan is to take down the nest box this afternoon. That’ll let me attach the owlet rail, clean the camera windows, and take this year’s owlet group photo.

The live video will continue throughout that process, but will mostly show an empty nest box, so that should be exciting.

Updates via Twitter as things happen.

April 27 – An owlet found its way into the entry hole on the 26th, and many of the others soon followed its example. This is, in effect, a signal that the first owlet will leave the nest inside of a week. Data from past years (2013, 2012) indicates first exit (presumably by the eldest owlet) early or late on its 29th day. That suggests April 30 of this year.

I am not ready, but it’s going to happen anyway, and real-soon-now. Yikes.

Owlet on perch is preened by Mom. More of the owlet on the perch, etc.

April 21 – More owlet climbing. The perch was the goal again, and seems to have been reached without much difficulty, though the owlet was only on it for about ten minutes, and there were no further climbing attempts. It seems, for instance, that the utility of being on the perch when food is delivered – a near guarantee of being the recipient of the food – has not been noticed.

I find it strange that successful climbing appeared out of the blue on the 19th, without any trial and error period being evident.

Perhaps something about the new perch is making climbing easier. (The two squirrels who occupied the nest box earlier this year—overflow from the squirrel box, I suspect—reduced the previous perch, and its mounts, to wood chips with great ease.)

However, the new perch is very similar to the previous one: same height (it even reused the existing screw holes for the supporting mounts, and the new mounts were modeled directly on the stubby remains of their predecessors, so recreating those didn’t change the height), same stick diameter (about ¾" to the extent that sticks maintain consistent dimensions), and so on. Due to the vagaries of scrap lumber on hand, one change was that the mounts went from ¾" to ½" thick, making the perch ½" longer. Another, more significant change, made as an experiment, was moving the perch an additional ½" from the side wall. I wondered if the perch would become more comfortable for the adults, whose tail feathers, I thought, might have been cramped by the previous perch.

I think Mme. Owl has made more use of the perch this year (though I have no numbers to back that up), but there could be factors other than tail feathers involved (a better view out the entry hole, for instance), so I really don’t know what’s going on.

Postcards: Thanks to Dale P., Geoffrey B., and Nancy C.

Images: Left, owlet on perch is preened by Mom. Right, more of the owlet on the perch with Mom.

First observered climbing attempt by an owlet is a success.

April 19 – For the first time this year, an owlet not only made a serious effort at climbing, but succeeded, in as much as the perch was successfully perched upon. Either they just haven’t bothered to make any serious climbing attempts until now, I’ve somehow missed them, or this is a remarkable first attempt.

Regardless, the video will be even more interesting from here on out.

Also, as you’ll have noticed, there are two other sure indications of the passing of time in this screech owl nest: One, Mme. Owl is no longer spending the whole day with the owlets, while the same mild temperatures that make that possible allow her to join her mate in hunting all night. And, two, the owlets are all showing patterns dark and light gray across their backs and sides, which marks the arrival in force of their flight feathers. Not that they could currently fly using those feathers, but give ’em a few more weeks and their parents will be facing a serious job of owlet herding.

Sorry about the lack of updates. A prescription drug went badly wrong: I manifested what seems to have been half of its negative side effects and none of its alleged good effects. Consequently, saying something intelligent here every day has been too much of a stretch, and I’m still not back to normal.

Postcards: Thank you, Nancy C.

Five owlets sit waiting for the next food delivery. Food delivery excitement. In this case, the food item is a gecko.

April 9 – The day was once again warm enough in the nest box to allow Mme. Owl to spend significant time on the perch while allowing the owlets to sprawl on the floor, as they will. (Regrettably, the thermometer may be misleading in the afternoons when the outer side of that wall of the nest box receives direct sunlight – it depends on whether the heat received by the thermometer in that manner is any different from the heat received by the nest box interior by the same mechanism. I’m not sure one way or the other.)

The night, too, was warm enough to allow both adults to go hunting. The owlets often respond by sitting-up in one or two rows facing the entry hole (through which all the good things in their world arrive), so they’ll be well placed to compete for any food delivery at a moment’s notice.

In the absence of their mother, their father sometimes tries to feed them directly, but, so far, hasn’t had any luck (as far as I can tell), even when the prey item’s size is right. I don’t think his instincts equip him with the “bock, bock, bock” song that means “I’m trying to give you food, open your mouth.” And the owlets, eyes still opening, don’t always demonstrate a well developed clue about what’s going on.

Donations: Just a note today. I haven’t been publicly crediting people for their donations, as I do with postcards. To my mind, the financial dimension made protecting people’s privacy a more significant concern than giving credit where it’s due. However, any donor who’d like to be acknowledged in the manner of the postcard senders is more than welcome to such credit; just send me an email saying it’s OK to do so. Otherwise, your secret identities are safe with me. (BTW, PayPal only tells me people’s names, not their addresses, etc.)

Postcards: My thanks to Karen B., Dale P. (who may, or may not, support my new idea for solving the lack of an “under mom” cam’ by using X-Ray photography), Matt R. (a man with an annoyingly clever woodpecker), Roxie & Kim (who obviously grasp the efficiency of batch processing), and once again to N. Cole (don’t know what Sallie knows of that incident, but I know she’s done, or is familiar with, that type of repair).

BTW, as many viewers have noted over the years, one’s local postcard industry often does not consider the town of sale to be worthy postcard material. It was never my intention to make sending postcards difficult, so my request for a postcard from wherever viewers live is best taken as an “ideal” postcard subject, but in no sense a requirement. (On the other hand, that misunderstanding just got me four postcards at once from Roxie & Kim, so, as misunderstandings go, I think it’s working out really well.)

Images: Left, all five owlets sit waiting for the next food delivery. Right, the early stage of excitement at a food delivery, in this case a gecko.

Male owl delivers a june bug to female owl. Mme. Owl feeds one of the owlets.

April 8 – Last night (from sunset to midnight) seems to have been a big time for small, flying insects like moths. (Did the recent rains bring them out?) Mme. Owl and her mate both caught those quickly and in quantity. The owlets failed to swallow quite a few of them, however, because such prey is usually delivered alive and that’s more complicated than what the owlets have come to expect. So, at times, the nest box seemed to be swarming with moths and other flying insects.

Donations: My earnest thanks to everyone who has donated; I had no expectation of such a fine, fast response. (No guilt trip intended for anyone else, just kudos to the donors.) I’m not out of the (projected) woods, yet, but am much closer than I’d imagined possible in so short a time.

Thermometer Note: The camera lacks the resolution to make the thermometer easily read. However, if you know what the thermometer looks like, reading it is relatively straightforward. As you can see, the big outer numbers are Fahrenheit values, and the number at the twelve o’clock position is 40°, so every number/blob to either side represents a ten degree difference.

The only tricky part is that whatever gives the thermometer’s needle its black appearance only works in the visible light spectrum. Under near infrared illumination, the needle takes on a light gray appearance and is much harder to see.

Similarly, I focused the camera while working under near infrared light. To my initial surprise, that’s why the image is a little out-of-focus when the nest box interior is lit by visible light. I’m not a student of optics, but, in this application, I believe the problem qualifies as a type of chromatic aberration that a properly designed and coated lens could avoid. However, the closed-circuit video security industry doesn’t concern itself with such fine points, in my experience, and certainly not in this case.

Images: Left, Mr. Owl delivers a june bug to Mme. Owl as the owlets stay warm beneath her. Right, Mme. Owl feeds one of the owlets.

An unusually clear image of owlet feeding. Mme. Owl retrieves one of the three dead mice I placed in the entry hole.

April 5 – There appear to have been three food deliveries between sunset and midnight. Regrettably, I didn't get a good look at two of them, and, with a pack of hungry owlets roaming the nest box (actually they’ve strongly favored confining their roaming to the area directly beneath Mme. Owl since the temperatures dropped a few days back), Mme. Owl has had a hard time maintaining a food cache to speak of, even if the deliveries are good items like cedar waxwings.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on the year’s owlet table, trying to get the most accurate possible laying and hatching times in there. Wow, is that tedious. Don’t get me wrong, I like good data even more than the next guy, so I’ll be pleased to have it, but fun tasks like this are undoubtably why professors keep graduate students as a pool of slave labor.

Images: Left, an unusually clear image of owlet feeding. The owlet’s eyes have not yet opened. Mme. Owl’s eyes are closed for protection, just as when she accepts food deliveries from her mate. Right, Mme. Owl retrieves one of the three dead mice I placed in the entry hole.

The smaller, lighter colored owlet on the top of the heap, should be owlet no. 5. The smaller, lighter colored owlet on the top of the heap, should be owlet no. 5.

April 4 – It looks like egg no. 5 hatched today. There is now a smaller, lighter colored owlet among the other owlets.

In the hours between sunset and midnight, there also appears to have been a lack of significant food deliveries. I don’t fear for the safety of the owlets, but the timing is poor, and difficult to understand.

April 2 – 5:00 AM CDT – I’ve added a new video stream: a repeat from twelve hours earlier (I call it the “T-12 stream” as a convenient shorthand). This gives everyone twice the chance of seeing something of interest, and lets people catch some of what happened while they were asleep, away, inadvertently glued to large objects, etc.

Enjoy.

Tech Note: There are several unresolved “to do” items where the T-12 stream is concerned, like gracefully handling gaps in the frame archive. Right now, if you encounter such a gap (they'll be short and rare, barring technical issues, or stupid mistakes at my end), the image won’t change until the gap has passed. Ideally, a frame would be generated on-the-fly to tell you when the feed will resume, but, like I said, there’s a “to do” list, and, as friend Peter L. admonished me many years ago, “perfect software never ships.” So, enjoy the T-12 feed, and I’ll see what I can do to nudge its implementation a littler closer to perfection in the days to come.

Meanwhile, I continue to tune the video server setup to improve scalability, load balancing, etc. So, if you encounter problems with the video, keep me informed. For instance, I sometimes see a blank space where the video should be when reloading a page. Sometimes the video starts on its own in five or so seconds (seems longer than that, of course). Other times, I have to quit my browser (Safari), and re-launch it. The latter “fix” suggests a browser problem, but I don’t have much data to go on, so I hesitate to reach a conclusion at this stage.

April 1 – 8:04 PM CDT – Egg no. 3 hatched at 8:04 PM. Mme. Owl seems to be postponing her constitutional this evening to provide the owlets with their first feedings, and ensure that everyone is kept properly warm (ambient nest box temperature is approximately 80 degrees, and the younger the owlet, the more it needs mom for warmth).

Regarding feedings, her mate will deliver anything from moths to white winged doves, and has absolutely no instinct to tell him how to make them edible to the owlets. He just knows there are owlets that need feeding and will be capturing whatever he can find, as fast as he can find it. Mme. Owl has the instincts that tell her that a small moth can be fed directly to a new owlet, while a white wing dove will require a great deal of tearing into small chunks.

6:33 PM CDT – Two eggs hatched this afternoon, and, when last seen around 5:40 PM, one egg had a nice, big hole in it, so that should be three hatchings in one day when all is said and done.

For much of the afternoon the temperature was above 90 degrees in the nest box, and therefore Mme. Owl could sit on the perch and just watch the action. Once temperatures dropped below 90, she returned to floor, and, while not in a traditional brooding posture, was presumably doing something to make the owlets more comfortable, including singing to them. It's the same song female screech owls use to tells owlets it’s feeding time, but more sustained, and without the food (which hasn’t confused the owlets; perhaps because, at this stage, they’ve never been fed). Mme. Owl will be very interested in the evening’s first food deliveries, needless to say.

The next good chance to see the owlets and the eggs will probably be somewhere between 7:54 and 8:24 PM CDT. At some point near the end of that range, Mme. Owl should go out for her post-sunset constitutional (voiding of bowels, drinking, wing stretching, coughing up a pellet, etc.), and she may sit in the entryway for a while prior to leaving, which will also make the owlets and eggs visible.

Live Video Question: Lots of viewers were able to watch this process live today. Anyone among that fortunate group is encouraged to send me email and report on how well the live video performed, or, perhaps, didn’t. (The Amazon cloud dashboard data I have suggests that it performed well, and that the load balancer was automatically adding and removing servers behind the scenes as the video demand fluctuated. Uncertainty enters, because I currently have no way of knowing if the metric that was triggering the load balancing was well chosen.)

12:38 AM CDT – One egg can be heard “peeping,” so the hatching process is beginning.

March 31 – Yet another day of five eggs and no sign of hatching.

Postcards: Thanks for the who-knows-how-manyth time to Nancy C. (I’ve been promoted to “owl expert,” BTW. I feel sure there’s a lifetime of things yet to learn just about my small acquaintances, the screeches, but I’m also confident that I’ve learned at least a few things in each of the last sixteen years, maybe even a thing or two that nobody else knows, and I just don’t know to tell anyone. So, yeah, maybe there’s an expert in me by now. Of course, that and five bucks will buy you a cup of coffee … but at the right time of the year, mine comes with a postcard or two on the side, and that’ll do me well enough.)

March 30 – Still five eggs (even as of 5:18 AM CDT on March 31). Put me down as surprised.

March 29 – Important lack of news: no eggs have hatched (not even as of the writing of this news item around 4 AM CDT on March 30).

Sorry about the lack of normal updates; a case of the common cold on which I thought I’d turned the corner late Thursday either came back with a vengeance Friday/Saturday, or the local allergy situation is so bad that even first-rate allergy medication left me in a condition indistinguishable from that cold. Bouts of usable consciousness have been intermittent, short-lived, and fraught with annoyances, since then.

To my own surprise, I was able to advance the work on the live video software, and its Amazon cloud installation, to a point that seems to have resulted in a viable service. My thanks to everyone who has tried it and dropped me a line to tell me how it turned-out. Reports were consistently good, and I’ve made some tweaks where there were hints that there might be avenues for improvement. (I know there are at least a few dial-up modem users watching this site; if you have a chance, I’d like to know how the video behaves for you.) My lingering concerns at this point are as yet un-encountered scaling issues. Time will tell on that one, so problem reports from the field will continue to be relevant.

My next goal is to provide video from twelve hours earlier, so that people in more-or-less any part of the world stand a good chance of having some activity to watch.

BTW, diehard Internet Explorer users shouldn’t feel slighted by the fact that the streaming video format I’m using (the format too dumb to die, Motion JPEG) is not supported by that browser. Or, rather, they shouldn’t feel slighted by me; Microsoft is the expert at slighting Internet Explorer users and I think it’s best to leave such things to experts. In this case, Microsoft has been ignoring Motion JPEG since its debut in, if vague memories can be trusted, 1996. Personally, I was amazed to find that that had been the case, and was still the case, but there are solid technical reasons for my choice of Motion JPEG that there’re just no good ways to work around (unless I find a nice way of doing large scale H.264 streaming).

March 28 – Want to help me test something? If you’re using a browser other than Internet Explorer, try some live video (no sound, just video). In principle the software I’ve written, and the cloud servers I’ve setup, should be able to handle a significant number of simultaneous viewers. However, it’s all new, and I can only test it up to a point. So, see if it works for you. If you encounter problems (or have other thoughts to share) drop me a line.

Mme. Owl stares out throught the entry hole from the security of the perch. All five eggs. No signs of hatching.

March 27 – Still five eggs and zero owlets. Based on the time it took for the first egg to hatch last year, I’m not expecting an owlet until Saturday or Sunday. That’s consistent with my viewing of the live video from the nest box; all the eggs appear to be completely intact, and I can hear no pre-hatching “cheeping.”

Images: Left, Mme. Owl stares out throught the entry hole from the security of the perch. She probably heard something outside that concerned her. She did this several times during the day, so whatever concerned her was recurring. Right, all five eggs and not a hint of hatching.

Postcards: Thanks, Jami W.

Aftermath of a food delivery, Mme. Owl broods the eggs, Mr. Owl prepares to return to the hunt. All five eggs and Mme. Owl just after her return from an outing.

March 26 – You remember how there was nothing much to report yesterday? Same thing today.

Tech. Note: This morning, Amazon announced another set of price cuts for a number of their cloud services (including all those used by this site), effective April 1, 2014. Haven’t seen any specifics, yet, but it’s good news in any case.

Images: Left, aftermath of a food delivery: Mme. Owl broods the eggs, Mr. Owl prepares to return to the hunt. Right, all five eggs and Mme. Owl just after her return from an outing.

Postcards: My thanks to Sysliene T. (I think you’re right about the cold.)

Mr. Owl delivers what is probably a Texas blind snake. Mme. Owl is a blur as she reaches for a food delivery from her mate.

March 25 – Another peaceful day of egg brooding.

Images: Left, Mr. Owl delivers what is probably a Texas blind snake. Right, Mme. Owl is a blur as she reaches for a food delivery from her mate. I’m guessing the food item is a june bug.

Bonus Movie: Since things aren’t exciting right now, I’ve retrieved an unreleased movie from last year’s archives that I think viewers will enjoy. The movie was shot on the occasion of photographing that year’s owlet family portrait, which, by no coincidence, was also the day I brought the nest box down to install the owlet rail. I’d intended this to be a high definition candid look at the owlets, but I failed to double-check the camera settings and shot the movie at 480p instead of 1080p. At the time, that seemed like a failure. Now I choose to think of it as a fifteen minute behind-the-scenes feature, that’s more candid than I intended. (Among other things, I’d’ve shaved if I’d planned to be in the movie.)

One aspect of the movie deserves clarification: at some point I state “now they’re getting upset.” That wasn’t a reference to the owlets, who were having a good time, as I think you’ll see, but to their parents, who’d just begun to make diving attacks at my head, because I was retrieving adventurous owlets and returning them to the perch where they’d started.

View the movie (102.4 MB, MPEG-4 format).

Mme. Owl reaches up to her mate to receive a food delivery. All five eggs.

March 24 – Nothing much to report except that brooding continues as expected. That’s good news, of course, but also very hard to make interesting.

Images: Left, Mme. Owl reaches up to her mate to receive a food delivery. I’m guessing it’s a moth. Right, all five eggs, seen while Mme. Owl was outside for her usual post-sunset voiding of the bowels, drink of water, and wing stretching; a combination I like to refer to collectively as her “constitutional.”

Mme. Owl preens the feathers on her mate’s head, following a food delivery. Food delivery in progress. The food items is probably a june bug.

March 23 – For unspecified reasons, Google’s AdSense program denied my appeal of their unspecified allegations, so I’m banned from using AdSense. Permanently. Zero recourse. No idea why, and I’ll never find out, either. Well, there are other ad brokers in the sea, but I don’t have time to deal with that for the foreseeable future. Concentrating on the positive, I much prefer this site without advertising, anyway.

Returning to the matter of owls, it was another calm day of brooding. And that’s about all there is to say about that.

BTW, the streaming video software work progressed significantly today. In principle, it’s a simple and fun piece of software to write, but the devil, of course, is in the details, and I’m about to face a few details that are either going to let the project proceed easily, or force me to rethink (or, at least, reimplement) a basic design decision. I’d planned to have a test version for people to try out as of the time I’m writing this, but I’m out of what a friend calls “brain juice” for the night – there’s just no way to extract any more significant thinking from my gray matter tonight.

Images: Left, Mme. Owl preens the feathers on her mate’s head, following a food delivery. That’s not only useful to him, but a way of reinforcing their pair bond. Right, food delivery in progress. The food item is probably a june bug.

Male (above) after delivering food to his mate (below). Mme. Owl stares into the camera.

March 22 – Another very ordinary day of egg brooding and food deliveries. The only remarkable thing that happened was far outside the nest box: Google pulled the advertising off of this site. For security reasons, they won’t say why, but they did give me the opportunity to write an appeal, even though I don’t know what supposed transgression I’m meant to be defending myself against. I wrote the appeal, and can only hope that it addressed whatever issue bothered Google’s automated fraud detector so errantly. No telling when I’ll hear back from Google. So, there goes the ad revenue for the foreseeable future. That said, the loss is more a problem in principle than in practice; daily total revenue from the ads ranged from eight cents to a dollar and change. Of course, without live imagery (sorry – I am working on it), the site isn’t at its most appealing right now, so it was my hope that revenue would increase once I rectified that situation.

Also, I need the revenue data points to help me determine what I can and can’t afford to do with this site in the future. Losing those data points for the time being is really the biggest problem the advertising shutdown is creating. (On the plus side, this site’s pages are a lot cleaner, and load faster, in the absence of ads.)

Images: Left, yet another post-food delivery image showing both of the adults (I never get tired of that sight, as you’ve probably noticed). Right, Mme. Owl obligingly stares into the camera while she continues to brood the eggs.

Male (above) delivers food to his mate (below). Male (on perch) and female shortly after a food delivery.

March 21 – After yesterday’s action, today couldn’t have been more unremarkable. Needless to say, the daylight hours went by without a single starling visit.

Images: Left, food delivery in progress. Right, male and female shortly after a food delivery.

Overdue business: Due to last year’s multifaceted weirdness, there weren’t a lot of postcards (your emails to the UT Austin President’s Office were even better – thanks again), but almost nobody was thanked for the postcards that were sent. It’s high time that was rectified. So, in no particular order, my apologies and belated thanks to Charlie B., Nona G., Geoffrey B., Paul H., Nancy C., and Kathy T. (If you sent a postcard, and never saw it mentioned, I probably put it in the wrong stack. Drop me a line and I’ll see about fixing that. I never discard the postcards, but that isn’t to say that I always remember all the places I've filed them.)

Current business: Thanks for this year’s postcards (and some post-nesting cards from last year) go out to Nancy C., Dale P., and Matt R.

Mme. Owl with captured interloping starling.

March 20 – Mme. Owl victorious. The interloping starlings were dealt a serious setback this morning when Mme. Owl captured and killed one of them. It wasn’t the quick kill that any raptor strives for (a basic risk-management measure), but it got the job done. This is not only good news for Mme. Owl, who had a good breakfast and lunch out of it, and will probably be left alone by the local starlings for the rest of the season, but for the other native cavity nesting birds of the area, notably, in this case, the red-bellied woodpeckers.

Among the native cavity nesting bird species, the small ones have to contend for their nest sites against house sparrows, and the larger ones have to contend against starlings. Both house sparrows (released in New York City in 1852), and starlings (released in New York City in 1890) are invasive species introduced from Europe.

View the movie (80.9 MB, MPEG-4 format).

Male (above) offers small food item to his mate (below). Female shuffles and rolls her eggs before returning to brooding.

March 19 – No significant starling disturbances today, though they did poke their heads in. Lots of small food deliveries during the night. So, an improvement on the starling front, and same-ol’ same-ol’ otherwise.

Images: Left, a quick, small food delivery in progress. Right, Mme. Owl rolls and shuffles her eggs before resuming brooding.

Female (left) and male (right) on the floor of the nest box after a food delivery. Starling pokes its head in the box, still hoping to claim it as a nest site.

March 18 – Once again, the food deliveries were numerous, but the largest prey item that was evident was a gecko; the others were probably june bugs. Mme. Owl continues to receive unwelcome visits from starlings, and seems to be putting more effort into defense. She’s at a disadvantage, however, because not only must she keep her eggs out of harm’s way during skirmishes, but her most effective weapons—her talons—are beneath her and are next to impossible to bring to bear on the starlings as they enter above her.

Male (above), female (brooding eggs) after a food delivery. Food delivery in progress. Male in the forground, female behind.

March 17 – Another day of uneventful brooding. The camera caught evidence of what seemed like an unusually large number of food deliveries in the midnight to sunrise timeframe. It may be that the weather has made popular screech owl snacks like june bugs highly available. (Not that I’ve seen any june bugs myself, but, then, I don’t spend all night cruising my neighborhood looking for them.)

Mme. Owl stands up to take a food delivery from her mate. Mme. Owl brooding, with her mate on the perch.

March 16 – No weirdness today. Just straightforward brooding of all five eggs, food deliveries, and so forth.

Moving the egg that had been excluded from brooding for six hours back into the clutch. Mme. Owl and one of the starlings that covets her nest box.

March 15 – The egg Mme. Owl stopped incubating yesterday at about 8:32 PM once again came to rate incubation at 2:22 AM this morning (left image). So that was almost six hours of being exposed to 60-70 degree temperatures.

Do I have an actual clue as to why Mme. Owl did that? Nope. Got nothing.

However, I can share my favorite hypothesis, as long as everyone agrees to take it with a grain of salt. That said, maybe … just maybe Mme. Owl can sense the relative degree of the development of the embryo in each egg, and uses selective brooding to slow the development of the more advanced eggs, thereby reducing the time between hatchings, and thus the age spread of the owlets. (This is definitely a trick used with the clutch as a whole, and is why brooding usually doesn’t begin in earnest until the third egg is laid.) She might acquire information about their development from, say, the temperature of each egg independent of her own thermal input; that would be an indication of the embryo’s increasing metabolic activity. Another possibility is egg mass, which should decrease over time, because an egg is not a closed system - it radiates heat generated by its yolk-fueled metabolism, exchanges gasses through the egg shell in order to oxygenate its blood and eliminate carbon dioxide, and forms an increasingly large air pocket inside the egg as the yolk’s volume declines more than the embryo’s volume increases. Her routine egg rolling and shuffling might give her a sense of egg mass. Yet another source of information about an embryo’s state might be the strength of its heartbeat, which Mme. Owl might sense through direct physical contact with her brooding patch, or maybe she can even hear it. In any case, the more powerful the heartbeat, the more developed the embryo should be. (I've handled screech owl eggs that would hatch in a day or two, as well as eggs that were hatching at the time. No feeling of a heartbeat was ever evident to my hands, but Mme. Owl’s brooding patch could be a whole lot more sensitive than my big old hands.)

By the same token, she might sense whether an embryo is dying or dead, in which case excluding the egg would make sense, because it should be easier and more efficient for her to brood a smaller clutch. In such a case the egg that goes from brooded to shunned, then back to brooded again, might have been a false alarm, or bad data interpretation on the part of Mme. Owl.

Or not. All that was just a hypothesis (or two) without a shred of supporting data. Food for thought only. (And thinking it is complete nonsense is quite alright.)

And the picture on the right? That’s a visit by one of the starlings that’ve been annoying Mme. Owl as they continue to covet the nest box.

Excluding one egg from brooding. Strange. Mme. Owl and her mate, and one egg still being exlcuded.

March 14 – Strange Mme. Owl. From about 8:32 PM to midnight she brooded only four of the five eggs. It seems too obvious a situation to be a mistake, and reinforcing that view, she left the nest at 9:24 PM for eleven minutes and continued to exclude one egg upon her return. Temperatures in the nest box ranged between 60 and 70 degrees while the egg was on its own. (How long she continued to exclude that egg after midnight, and what temperature range that involved, will have to be a subject for the news on the 15th.

Sallie, the raptor rehabber, comments that “maybe this is her first rodeo.” Quite possible. For myself, I’m thinking more: “You – in the box – come out with your talons where we can see them and explain yourself.” (If only wildlife biology was so simple.)

Food delivery. Agitated Mme. Owl guards against starling intrusions.

March 13 – The morning’s post-sunrise hours included enough starling intrusions to put Mme. Owl into full defensive mode (rightmost image). Temperatures remained low enough that constant brooding was called for. Otherwise, still five eggs, so I think hopes for an oh-so-rare sixth egg should be abandoned. We haven’t been shortchanged, of course; five egg clutches are plenty rare enough. (It’s been fifteen years since my box had a clutch of more than four eggs, and I may be beating the odds, even so.)

Votes on the live video vs. time-lapse loops issue are divided more-or-less equally, with a noteworthy showing for the write-in candidate “whichever can be ready soonest.” At the moment, I’m plugging away at the live video option, because I’d like to see that working, whether it turns out to be financially practical or not, and also because a local, would-be Barn Owl cam’ could use the same solution, having been sold a system that crashes under the load of ten viewers by a firm of “expert consultants.” (Oh, to be paid so well for so little work and ability....)

In the end, however, the votes suggest that having both the time-lapse loops and the live video would be desirable, at least in part because they are two different visualization techniques, neither one of which can entirely substitute for the other.

Feel free to continue voting; whatever happens, it’s been a pleasure hearing from so many viewers.

Still, a mere five eggs Mom & Pop

March 12 – Still a mere five eggs. ;-) With temperatures lower than yesterday, Mme. Owl has stuck appropriately closer to the eggs; she brooded them all day, and took only a 20 minute break before sunrise, and a 15 minute break shortly after sunset. Otherwise, it was all brooding, all the time.

Also, if you happen to have missed it, don't hesitate to weigh in on yesterday’s question.

Five eggs and holding Family profile

March 11 – The clutch remains at five eggs, but a sixth still isn't out of the question, although it is unlikely. Meanwhile, it was a welcome warm day, warm enough that Mme. Owl periodically ceased brooding duty, knowing the eggs were warm enough without her. Observed food deliveries by Mr. Owl included a caterpillar and gecko. Mme. Owl left the nest occasionally during the night, possibly to share a large prey item with her mate on a nearby tree limb.

I continue to work to bring live images back to the site. At the moment, I'm working toward providing real-time video at slightly more than seven frames per second, which sounds bad, but looks pretty good. (That'd be video only; no sound.) It would be a replacement for the continuously updating five minute, time-lapse loops used last year. (That was four frames from each minute, for a total of twenty frames displayed in a fifteen second loop, with one new frame added, and the oldest frame removed, as each loop completed.) Those loops use far less bandwidth than the real-time video, and are more practical in that sense. On the other hand, I got the impression last year that some people didn't understand that those loops were being updated on each play-through and/or found that the substantial repetition in each loop was tedious. More significantly, I think people want and expect real-time video in these days of (generally) plentiful bandwidth.

Question: Which approach would you prefer: the time-lapse loops, or real-time video? Drop me a line. (I’m still crunching numbers on the potential cost of the real-time video, and that may yet prove to be a sticking point, but let’s assume for the moment that it will be do-able, even though it’ll have to be displayed next to odious advertisements.)

March 10 – The clutch is holding at five eggs. The interval between egg layings increases with each egg, so a sixth (if there’s to be one) may still be a day or two away. The last time I played landlord to a six egg clutch was in 1999, and every year I hope it’ll happen again. Nonetheless, a five egg clutch is unusual enough, so no hard feelings, Mme. Owl, if five’s the limit.

Five eggs!

Five eggs!

March 9 – Mme. Owl excels herself by laying a fifth egg sometime between 6:52 AM and 7:31 PM. Five egg clutches are very rare. Rarer still are six egg clutches, which are as big as a screech owl clutch can be. Does Mme. Owl have one more in her? It'll take a few days to determine one way or the other.

Regarding the ongoing lack of live images, it was a weekend from hell (I’ve had more pleasant diseases), so there was no chance to write any of the necessary software, apart from some preliminary tinkering tonight. The site doesn't seem right without them, of course, so I want to see live images of some sort on here as much as everyone else.

March 7 – Many thanks to viewer Matt R. who has come-up with the following time ranges for the laying of each egg:

1st egg
2014-02-26 03:30:16 – Empty box clearly visible
2014-02-26 18:17:01 – 1 egg clearly visible

2nd egg
2014-02-28 19:42:01 – 1 egg clearly visible
2014-02-28 23:03:47 – 2 eggs clearly visible

3rd egg
2014-03-03 18:47:46 – 2 eggs clearly visible
2014-03-03 21:17:16 – 2 eggs clearly visible; #3 might be under owl, or might not exist yet
2014-03-03 21:28:16 – 3 eggs visible
2014-03-03 22:39:46 – 3 eggs clearly visible

4th egg
2014-03-06 06:00:31 – 3 eggs clearly visible
2014-03-06 15:04:01 – 3 eggs visible; #4 might be under owl, or might not exist yet
2014-03-06 16:26:46 – 4 eggs clearly visible

Since I have an archive of frames taken every 15 seconds from both the side and attic cameras, I may be able to narrow down these time ranges a little more, but this is already valuable, real data, and it will also reduce the time it takes to try to narrow down the ranges a little more.

So, Matt, thanks again.

March 7 – Backgrounder – Matt asked about being able to estimate the charges for hosting this site in the Amazon cloud (AKA Amazon Web Services). It's still early morning for me, so I don't know if my response was very coherent, and I'm sure it won't win any prizes for compactness, but since other people may be curious, this is it:

The nice thing about Amazon’s cloud, is also the problem when it comes to predicting fees: they only charge you for what you use, and their resources are so vast that they can meet the demands of pretty much any level of usage. (This makes the Amazon cloud the opposite of the sites that claim to offer unlimited usage for a fixed price, but which will actually shut down sites that are using too many of their resources. Amazon has no fixed monthly fee; it can be zero if you’re doing very little, but a really successful site could rack up some meaningful charges.) So, it’s up to the audience: the more interesting I can make the site, the larger the audience will be (up to some point; presumably it won’t become a national pastime and some scurvy dogs will watch other people’s owls, birds, etc.), and the longer they are likely to watch the site at any given time. All of that is increased usage: it makes the ads more valuable (though it could also mean that I’ll need more ads, and, arguably, that’s the case already, as I earned a whole 91 cents from the ads yesterday, and Google, who places the ads, doesn’t pay anyone until they’ve accumulated at least $100 in earnings), but also means using more of Amazon’s network capacity, and, to a lesser extent, their storage, and I’m billed accordingly each month.

Their prices are quite reasonable, and sometime last year they more-or-less halved them all due to, I expect, competition, economies of scale, or both. I expect that there will be a lot of similar price cuts in the future. So, their prices are good and should continue to improve, but the key uncontrolled variable is the audience.

The audience will increase when I get the live pictures going again. It will increase when there are owlets. It will increase if I get a Motion JPEG stream going (that would result in a very significant increase in network utilization, and charges for the virtual machines in their cloud that would be running the Motion JPEG repeater/server software I intend to write). Of course, I want all of those things to happen, and I’ll just have to see how it goes billing-wise. Unfortunately, if I find there’s a need to do something awful like soliciting donations (laying a guilt trip on all of the loyal viewers – just one of many things I never want to do), I wouldn’t really know about the need until the bill for the second month of nesting arrives, and that’s right when the owlets will be leaving and the audience will be going away, too (understandably).

Another factor that prevents prediction is this: the more of any Amazon service you use, the more likely you are to move into pricing tiers that reduce the per-unit cost. The absolute costs will still be increasing, but the amount of data (for instance) that each viewer can consume for the same price also increases, making Amazon’s service more cost effective.

So, it’s going to be an interesting experiment to run. I just have to hope that, at the end, I’m not significantly out-of-pocket.

Of course, I don’t want anyone interpreting that as “please restrict usage of the site,” because that would not only undermine the site’s purpose, but also give me non-representative data for this experiment (it’d also reduce ad revenue, such as it is). So, everyone should watch as much as they want in order to give me good usage data. (Admittedly, there’s nothing to watch at the moment, but I’ll be very disappointed if I haven't at least partially rectified that during this upcoming weekend.)

And, just in case anyone's wondering, the reason there’s nothing to watch isn't that Amazons servies are hard to write software for—actually, they're easy—it’s just that they’re very different in nature from what I was using previously, and the image serving software I wrote incorporates something like ten years of implicit assumptions about how it will interact with the server, and what type of server it is using, most of which don’t apply to Amazon’s service, so my naive initial attempt to adapt my image serving software ran into invalid, and often subtle and well hidden, architectural assumptions at every turn. All of those ugly surprises means the software isn’t ready yet, and that it may even make the most sense to build a new piece of software which merely salvages discrete hunks of good code from the original software.

Well, that's it. Anyone still reading at this point deserves some sort of reward for their perseverance (even though they arent going to get one). So, I’ll just say: bear with me folks, and have good ones.

March 6 – Two good things:

  1. Mme. Owl laid the fourth egg sometime today.
  2. The daily image galleries are working. (Sorry about the initial non-workiness.)

March 5 – I'm bringing up this site for the year, because (1) the owls are nesting, and (2) even without live images from the nest, the daily galleries and news are better than nothing. Meanwhile, I'll continue to work on the changes to the site’s software that will make it possible to include live images on the new non-UT hosting service (Amazon’s cloud) to which I’ve had to switch after a rogue manager took this owl cam’ down twice last year, which is two times too often. I regret the delay; as I dig into the work, the required software changes continue to prove to be more extensive than I’d anticipated.

More significantly, Mme. Owl has laid three eggs so far (as of early this morning), and images are being captured every fifteen seconds and archived, so I will be able to provide the daily image galleries, which, as I generate them now, I haven’t seen, either. So, if followers of this cam’ want to review those daily galleries, you can help me start the process of narrowing down when each was laid. Or not. Feel free to just enjoy the galleries, but if you want to send the me the date and time of the last image that clearly showed the clutch before a new egg appeared, and the date and time of the first frame that showed an additional egg, that’ll help me narrow down where I have to look in the complete archive of frame to further refine the date and time of laying.

P.S. I sincerely regret having to include advertisements on the site now, but I have to try to offset the unpredictable hosting costs. Actually, let me expand on that: I hate advertising. From my perspective, it’s all materialist propaganda, intended to convince people that their lives would be wonderful (or they would avoid some terrible, embarrassing problems) if only they bought thing X, which is, essentially, never true. Wonderful lives aren’t bought. (If they were, I’d’ve saved up my pennies and bought one by now.) That said, I like material as much as the next guy, but it doesn’t make anyone’s lives complete and satisfying, attract members of the opposite/same sex, etc. Advertising is, for the most part, brain-washing nonsense to perpetuate needless consumption. (It is true, of course, that there are useful devices and services out there, and advertising is sometimes the only way to reach the people who could benefit from them, but even those messages are usually wrapped-up in carefully perfumed balderdash, and have to be viewed with the same jaundiced eye as all other advertising.)

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