Fun with the Birds

Ok, so blogger sucks at uploading images - it always puts them in reverse order and is a pain to rearrange them.  So... to keep up and posting, the images will be in backwards order.

Kind of like a Seinfeld episode, right?

Here is a chicken with our Hawk-cam attached for testing.  She wasn't too happy about it, but was a good 'sport'.

This young rooster liked the camera even less - he pounced and wouldn't rest until he had taken it off the princess.

Fortunately, no one hurt.  The rooster became the testbed for the other Hawk-cam design.  One observation - feathers can get in the way of the video port...

 We've been using these small, light, cheap cameras on balloons, (see nwpodcast.blogspot.com), and lately helicopters.  It is down there on the skid.

 Folks have been using cameras on birds for a while... and in a few weeks we'll be attending a Hawk & Falcon Hunting Association meeting and thought "wouldn't it be cool to put one on a Hawk as it hunts!"

 So, we've come up with a few different designs for 'spy cameras' to mount onto a bird.  Hence, the world's first "Hawk-cam" is born.  Now the pictures of the chickens are making more sense, right?

Lots of dimensional changes, design changes, etc.  The learning process is fun, and the testing (with the chickens) is even MORE fun!  Hopefully, in the end, we get some good hunting videos from the belly of the beast - off a hunting hawk!

Stay tuned...