Explore the New Bird Cams Website

It has been nearly 9 years since we launched Bird Cams in 2012. Over that time, tens of millions of viewers have visited our website to watch, learn, and share their observations. We’re excited to be rolling out a new web experience that should make all of these activities easier and more seamless across your devices. 

Watching Live 

We’ve listened to your feedback, and universally you’ve told us you’d love the main viewing area to be bigger, and to play nicely with your mobile devices! Now the live feed will size automatically to the size of your window, regardless of your device. We’ve made navigating from cam to cam easier, too, with large images and titles for each of the current live cams at the top of the page. Plus, when you scroll down the page the live video will minimize and stay viewable, so you won’t miss anything live while you’re checking out the new highlights and news sections. 

Seeing What You Missed

It can be hard to keep up with everything that happens on a 24/7 live cam. Even tougher: keeping up with all of the happenings across all of our cams! Twitter still provides our most up-to-date postings from our volunteers (and reposts from the cam community), and you can expand each cam’s Twitter account by clicking on “Updates” above the live feed. All of the cam’s recent highlights are now accessible right below the live feed, as well as a link to the entire highlights playlist on YouTube. You can also dive into our Instagram feed and the Bird Cams YouTube feed for highlights from across the cams.

Learning and Sharing

Since the beginning of the Bird Cams project, you’ve shared observations and asked questions about what you’ve seen. Our new site provides an enhanced news feed where we can share information about what’s being seen on cam, as well as a comment feed that should increase everyone’s ability to share and discuss their observations. We’ve also bundled all of the year-to-year breeding highlights into one central “Timeline” page for each nest cam, so that you can browse back through seasons and compare the present with the past.

Thanks for joining us and playing an important part in learning and sharing about birds online. We want to hear your feedback about these changes, too: leave a comment below or email us at birdcams@cornell.edu and let us know what you like and what you’d like to see improve, and we’ll continue to work on providing the best experience for viewing birds on the web. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Will I be able to watch highlights and review information from retired cams? 

Yes! Right now we are in the process of archiving information and highlights from retired cams so that viewers can look back at all of their favorite nests that are no longer broadcasting live on Bird Cams. 

I miss the updates from cam Twitter feeds. Where did they go? 

The Twitter feeds for each camera are available with the click of a button! Click on the Twitter icon in the top right corner of a cam page (above the live stream) to reveal/hide the Twitter feed next to the cam view.

How do I find highlights and news from previous seasons? 

All the highlights from past seasons can be accessed via each cam’s YouTube playlist, which can be found in the Video Highlights section below the live stream. Main events from past seasons are featured on the nest cams’ timeline posts located in the News section.

Where can I comment? 

Besides Twitter, there are two main places where you can post comments.

Video Highlights: Scroll down below the live stream and click on any of the video highlights. You will be directed to the Bird Cams YouTube channel to watch the video, where you can post comments and questions. 

News Items: Each cam features a News section below the Video Highlights section. Click on any article of interest, and at the bottom of each article there is a Disqus comment section where you can share your thoughts and discuss the main events happening on your favorite cam.

How do I find out about new cam launches?  

Subscribe to the Bird Cams eNewsletter to receive updates about cam launches and top highlights from your favorite cams. You can also follow Bird Cams on Facebook if you’d enjoy daily highlights and updates sprinkled into your news feed (you know you would!).