Did you know you can get live closeup views of Bald Eagle and Peregrine Falcon nests from the comfort of your own home? Snoop on Penguins and Avocets? Access more than a dozen webcams hosted by Cornell, some located in exotic, far-off locations? It may not equal getting out in your sunhat and binoculars, but it’s birding in the Current Circumstances.
For starters, there are webcams hosted by The Institute for Wildlife Studies that feature Bald Eagles and Peregines tending to their nests on the Channel Islands. Check them out at http://www.iws.org/livecams.html.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is currently closed to the public due to the pandemic, but you can still see their lively penguins preening, waddling, and swimming on the webcam at https://montereybayaquarium.org/animals/live-cams/penguin-cam. You can see Blacknecked Stilts and Black Oystercatchers with their amazingly long legs by watching the webcam in the aviary at https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/live-cams/aviary-cam.
Although you’re probably not traveling right now, you can still view beautiful, active birds from other parts of the country and overseas on live webcams operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Their cameras focus not only on some species we see can locally such as Red-tailed Hawks, but also on some species at great distances from us. Watch White-tailed Tropicbirds in Bermuda, Northern Royal Albatrosses as far away as New Zealand, and many others at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/all-cams/
We hope you’ll enjoy these bird-Zoom experiences — and that we’ll see you on the trail when our regularly-scheduled local bird walks resume.