Welcome to the weblog for the Central Coast Sandhill Crane Project, a project to study the natural history of sandhill cranes on the central coast of British Columbia, also known as the Great Bear Rainforest.
We are currently working on a remote camera project with Pacific Wild, a non-profit conservation and education organization based on Denny Island, near Bella Bella. Remote cameras can be used as a non-invasive means of studying wildlife behaviour. A camera is set up near a crane nest site and footage is transmitted through a wireless signal to a receiver up to 5 km away. Power for the camera and transmitter is supplied by cable by deep cell batteries placed at a distance from the site so that cranes are not disturbed when batteries need to be changed. We plan to place the receiving station in the local school, where students will be able watch nesting cranes live, pan, tilt and zoom the camera, and participate in editing footage for upload to the web. Please see www.pacificwild.org for more information on this exciting project. Clips of the footage will be posted and updated frequently on the Pacific Wild website. The two eggs at the current camera site were laid between April 27th and May 1st, and may begin hatching around May 27th. If all goes well we will catch this event on film!
