Molly, a barn owl, and her clutch. (Photo courtesy of Carlos Royal)
Meet Molly, a barn owl and new mom. A retired couple in San Marcos, California rigged an owl box in their backyard with a color video camera streamed to the internet — with sound. You can watch Molly here: http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox. She has about five eggs she’s been laying on since Feb. 13th, and one owlet hatched last night. Go meet Molly. Seriously. Go meet her.
“We’re up to 20 countries where people have contacted us and said they’re watching Molly,” said Carlos Royal, owner of the owl box and U-Stream video during one of his cut-ins to the live feed to talk to fans of the site on March 21. “We have more people watching Molly than attended Woodstock.”
Carlos and his wife Donna support making residential backyards friendly to wild birds. They are trying to use this nest box cam to educate people about owls and living with wildlife. They’ve also been getting some media for their efforts.
So. Go meet Molly.
Do they have time-stamps on the videos: it would be nice to know the time of dawn and the time of hatching. Will they hatch one per day? Did the camera run before the eggs were laid – are their time-stamps of when each egg was laid? I guess I should ask the cam folks…
Sorry, I don’t know about time stamps on the video. I think when Carlos was on earlier he said they expected them to hatch one per day based on how they were laid (production order). So hopefully Max (owlet-1) will have a bro or sis in the morning.
oh, and I am fairly sure they’ve had the cam on since at least the first one was laid.
There are dates and times of egg-lay on Ustream:
Egg 1 2/13/10 12:15 PM
Egg 2 2/16/10 07:23 AM
Egg 3 2/18/10 09:13 AM
Egg 4 2/20/10 11:07 AM
Egg 5 2/22/10 02:00 PM
Egg 6 2/25/10 09:35 AM
But I am not sure how they were determined and how accurate the times-of-day are and I cannot post comments on the blog.