Colorado Crane Conservation Coalition board member Barry Kaplan said the organization’s efforts to install a camera near where a pair of greater Sandhill cranes normally nests in Northwest Colorado is paying off this spring.
“We’ve got some things on film that we’ve never seen before,” said Kaplan, who has been heavily involved with the cameras as a board member and a member of the coalition’s education committee. “Nobody’s ever done this before. To our knowledge, we are the first to do this kind of a camera and have live streaming.”
He said there are plenty of cameras streaming osprey, hawk and eagle nests, but he said he has not seen any focused on cranes. He said this camera began capturing rarely seen moments almost as soon as the cranes arrived at the site, which is located on private land in the Yampa Valley.
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS Habits of the Greater Sandhill crane will be on full display as Yampa Valley’s first live crane cam gets set up later this year.
Paid for with $4,000 in grants from the Yampa Valley Community Foundation, the Colorado Crane Conservation Coalition will install the camera this spring on a private farm in Hayden. It will live stream the nest on the group’s website and allow for anyone with internet access to watch the cranes changing places with their mate, rotating eggs and hatching their chicks. Staff also will edit and post highlights from the nest.
“It’s a really great way to learn about what cranes do on the nest,” said Erin Gelling, program director for the Colorado Crane Conservation Coalition. “One of the big reasons we wanted to be able to do this is to inform people about cranes and about animal behavior itself.”