{"id":205,"date":"2012-05-15T13:50:24","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T18:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www-test2.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/?p=205"},"modified":"2012-07-10T09:59:40","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T14:59:40","slug":"uw-madisons-newest-eyes-in-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/articles\/205","title":{"rendered":"UW-Madison’s Newest “Eyes In the Sky”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC), with its large array of satellite dishes atop its towering building, isn\u2019t the only place on south campus with \u201ceyes in the sky.\u201d The climate research facility has a bird\u2019s eye view of some of the University of Wisconsin-Madison\u2019s newest residents: a nesting pair of red-tail hawks and their three tiny white chicks.<\/p>\n

\"red<\/p>\n

The hawks have nested on a protruding window ledge of nearby Weeks Hall for the Geological Sciences, giving the researchers at SSEC an excellent opportunity to watch the young family grow and prosper. Taking a hint from their own satellite-based research, SSEC researchers have re-purposed a roof-top camera to provide a 24-7 video feed <\/a> of the nest.<\/p>\n

If not pulling \u201cnest duty,\u201d one or another of the proud parents can usually be seen either perched on one of the rooftop instruments of SSEC, or flying high in the sky, peering down in search of the chicks\u2019 next meal.<\/p>\n

Male and female red-tailed hawks are nearly identical in appearance, making differentiation from a distance almost impossible. They mate for life and often return to the same nest for several years. They lay up to three eggs in the early spring. After four to five weeks, the eggs hatch and snow white chicks, known as eyasses, emerge, mouths open and hungry. After another six to seven weeks the young raptors will begin to leave the nest for short flights, honing their hunting skills. Soon after that they strike out on their own.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, hawks built a nest on the Weeks Hall window. Last year they returned and SSEC placed a small video camera to watch them hatch and fledge their young. This year a higher resolution camera provides an even better view.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur streaming video web page has had over 50,000 hits and over 30,000 unique visitors since the camera went online in late March,\u201d says John Lalande of SSEC\u2019s Technical Computing Department. \u201cWe have had visitors from at least 50 countries so far. Traffic has definitely spiked over the last few days. At the beginning of the week, we might have had around 100 simultaneous viewers. By Thursday, we were over 500. Similarly, hits per day on the web site went from a few hundred a day over the first few weeks to a few thousand per day this week. Today we\u2019ve had 9,700 hits \u2013 so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oblivious to all this attention, the hawks feed their young and prepare them for their own time in the sky.<\/p>\n

Satellites orbiting overhead in space, raptors soaring over South Campus, or visitors to the hawk\u2019s streaming web page, many eyes are gazing down on the UW campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Red-tailed Hawk Family Thrives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-articles","tag-hawkcam"],"acf":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}