Tweeters,

I'm going to assume a lot of you have no idea what's going on at
Monroe Wagner Elementary School. So here is a short history.

When Vaux's Swifts migrate they like to roost together in large
numbers in big old hollow trees. When big old hollow trees were
logged the swifts switched to big old hollow chimneys.

We have identified a dozen or so roost sites in North America that
host the majority of the birds in both migrations. The 1939
decommissioned brick chimney coming out of the middle of Frank Wagner
Elementary School in Monroe is one of them. Audubon recently led an
effort to treat the aging structure to a steel angle seismic retrofit.

That was completed last summer and Audubon used the construction crane
to install two IP surveillance cameras to get close ups of the
swifts. One camera sits on the top lip and captures the birds as they
enter and exit the chimney. The second camera is inside the chimney
and looks down. We also put a microphone just inside the opening.
The cameras and mic were controlled and recorded by a remote computer
in the nurse's office. Somehow they continued recording for the
entire 2010 Southbound migration and Audubon and especially Curt Young
went through hours and hours of the recorded footage to put together a
one hour video of the best of southbound 2010.

Come mid April the cameras were still working so we got a wireless
Comcast account and a couple weeks ago started live streaming what the
cameras were viewing through Olympia Systems. Just a few days ago
WDFW added the Monroe Swifts to their WildWatchCam website which runs
24-7.

You can view the exterior camera here.
http://wdfw.wa.gov/wildwatch/vauxcam/video_outside.html
and the inside camera here.
http://wdfw.wa.gov/wildwatch/vauxcam/video_chimney.html

The inside camera is available low light and as it gets dark you can't
see much. Once its dark dark you can't see anything.

Its likely the Monroe site will be having thousands of swift guests
each evening for the rest of May. You might want to make the drive,
or check it out from your home office.

Larry Schwitters
Issaquah
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