Better Than 'Survivor': Wild Drama Hooks Viewers On Nest Web Cams
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Reality TV has made stars - however briefly - of wayward housewives, hunky bachelors and conniving castaways. Now the ever-present video camera is bringing celebrity status to the natural world. Grace Hood from Colorado Public Radio explains.
GRACE HOOD, BYLINE: Nik Brockman is Boulder County's web specialist. He's running through the cast of characters from last season. There were two females. A second female arrived and kicked out the original female. They think she was bonded to the male who was also living there.
NIK BROCKMAN: And then those two were the ones that took over the nest.
HOOD: Oh, really? So there was, like, a nest takeover?
BROCKMAN: So it was, yeah, it was what some people called it - the home-wrecker, the home-wrecker osprey.
HOOD: A romantic slight is a storyline that's the bread-and-butter of reality TV programming. It plays well to nest cam watchers too. Since the osprey cam started four years ago, Brockman says it's become the most popular page on the County's website. So when the county's camera got zapped by lightning last year, Boulder spent thousands to reinstall it.
BROCKMAN: It's a good combination of using technology to see what's going on that you might not be able to see at the ground level but also raising issues around open space and wildlife preservation.
HOOD: Preservation is what drew Bob Anderson and the Raptor Resource Project into nest cams more than a decade ago. Today, the bald eagle camera he set up in Decorah, Iowa is one of the most-watched in the country. He says there's a sense of ownership for regular viewers.
BOB ANDERSON: Somewhere between 50 hours and 500 hours of watching, whatever bird cam, you know, blows your dress up, it becomes your bird.
HOOD: Anderson says everyone from the disabled who can't get outdoors to students in classrooms have been tuning in lately since the eaglets have appeared. He thinks what makes to the Decorah cameras so popular are the social components, an army of volunteers who post pictures and field questions. Charles Eldermire is the bird cam's project leader at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in New York. His lab hosts 6 to 20 cameras depending on the time of the year.
CHARLES ELDERMIRE: It's a relatively small investment for what might be a large amount of web traffic.
HOOD: And it's not just about cameras. The feed appears on a webpage with its own timeline, frequently asked questions on the species and Facebook links.
ELDERMIRE: And that gives you a great audience to then talk to about - at least for us as a nonprofit - what our mission is.
HOOD: Its led to teachable moments for the lab's viewing audience around the perils of plastics for the Laysan Albatross. But Eldermire says a 24/7 live feed of wild creatures can also create awkward situations, like when one nestling is trying to kill another.
ELDERMIRE: So we don't sugarcoat anything. But what we try and do is provide enough information and in an engaging enough way that people aren't surprised by what's going to happen. And they know that we are thinking of them as viewers when we're crafting the environment that they can watch it in.
HOOD: Eldermire says volunteers are on-call at all hours. So if there's an event like death, viewers are notified before they load the nest cam. Back in Boulder County, the osprey nest cam has gotten another dose of drama this year. Web specialist Nik Brockman says once again, there's a home-wrecker scenario with the same two females from last season scuffling over the male and the nest.
BROCKMAN: We're just kind of watching and seeing what happens.
HOOD: As for ratings, Brockman says thousands of viewers tuned in last year. They're hoping for a repeat performance this season too. For NPR News, I'm Grace Hood.
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