A live feed camera capturing real time views of a red-tailed hawk’s nest on a ledge of Weeks Hall by members of the Space Science and Engineering Center has gained viral popularity over the past weeks.
Mark Hobson, SSEC spokesperson, said last year the center had set up a smaller and cheaper camera with less resolution to film the hawks, but this year it made improvements and a weather gauge camera was re-purposed to capture activity in the nest.
“I think this is a spectacular viewpoint on a rarely seen thing,” Hobson said.
Members of SSEC set up the camera because they thought the nest would be “a cool thing to look at” even though it is not necessarily something that matches the science done in their department, Hobson said.
He added people all over the country have called to ask about the birds, and they did not expect the popular reactions the video has received.
John Lalande, an administrator from SSEC, said the same family of hawks has been nesting on top of Weeks Hall for the past few years. He added two years ago people started to enjoy watching them out of the window when they were in a good viewing spot.
The idea for the feed came last year from SSEC’s Executive Director of Engineering Fred Best when the hawks moved around a corner that made them harder to see, Lalande said.
“Even when the hawks were nesting on the side of Weeks Hall, we could watch from our building. It’s not the same as having a camera 10 feet away and zoomed in on the nest,” Lalande said. “The close-up view the camera provides of the nesting family is amazing.”
Lalande said this year the feed was initially hosted on his Mac Mini, but once the story of the webcam was promoted in the University of Wisconsin Twitter feed, viewership exploded and SSEC was not able to keep up with all the traffic.
Lalande said they initially tried a live feed with USTREAM but switched over to working with Division of Information Technology Support, which was able to upgrade their server from one to 10 gigabites per second last Friday because of the complaints they were receiving about commercials.
Nick Ciganovich from SSEC and Brian Hess from the Department of Geoscience were two individuals that did a lot of work in installing the camera, Lalande said.
Telecommunications professor Barry Orton said he thinks people find the video interesting because it features baby animals, a subject that attracts the attention and curiosity of women, men and kids alike.
Orton said videos like the hawk webcam are especially intriguing among adults who are bored and students who want to avoid their studies as finals approach.
“I don’t know if it is that people love watching the baby hawks or whether it’s the gore of watching the parents bring back rabbits and squirrels for the babies to eat, … but for me it’s both,” Lalande said.
