The Little Egg Cam

I’ve got big news, and even bigger news.

The big news is that Giantsbane and Myrtle’s nest is (imminently) about to hatch in Todd Pover’s Plover Park. It will be the first piping plover nest to hatch on the whole coast. First!

The bigger news is that you are invited to watch.

My Little Egg Foundation has been running a series of remote cameras at coastal nests this year as part of our NestStory data collection project. During the hatch phase of some nests we are using live video feeds. When Kashi Davis and Emily Heiser from NJ Fish & Wildlife first watched the feed, their hearts melted at the cuteness and they immediately recognized what an opportunity this was to give people a closer look at something so rare, so precious, and so hidden.

I was stunned. Sharing the cam feeds live from the hatch of a piping plover’s nest sounds like something I’d ask them if I could do and they’d say “no”; not the other way around!

But I too recognized what a unique opportunity this was, so I scrambled to develop a way to bring the feed to you before they changed their minds.

The result is The Little Egg Cam. Now, before you get too excited, this is not a proper web cam. We are broadcasting live from the beach where there is no power or internet. We are also using this system to monitor the nests as part of our ongoing work. The cameras are high speed but lower resolution and we will be using them sparingly to control costs and improve reliability.

But each time we run the feeds, they will be broadcasted to the Little Egg Foundation web site, and the most recent clip will remain there until the next one replaces it. This means you can pop in anytime to check on the nest and watch the hatches unfold live, in real time!

So why are you still reading this? Get on over to The Little Egg Cam and help us monitor the first hatch of the 2021 season; live from Todd Pover’s Plover Park! You can play armchair biologist, filed tech, and wildlife manager from the comfort of your home. You can also read a little more about what we’re doing and what’s involved with determining nest fates for calculating the productivity of endangered species. Meep!

And now I gotta go. My phone is blowing up with alerts from the nest which can only mean one thing: the babies are coming.

Visit The Little Egg Cam.