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Blue herons nesting in the Sylvan Grove

Several families of blue herons are nesting this spring in the Sylvan Grove, which the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering overlooks. From the sixth floor, one nest in particular is easily visible, and neither the proud parents nor the nestlings seem to mind if we monitor their progress. And monitor it we are:

1. Point your web browser at www.cs.washington.edu/heroncam to get a live view of the nest from our cambot.

2. CSE faculty member Bruce Hemingway, our unofficial department photographer, has created and is continuing to add to a wonderful photo album of high-quality photographs. Click on the image at right to visit it.

3. For those of you on a multicast-capable “research network” (all of UW, plus some large companies, but probably not your home internet service), CSE staff member Fred Videon has established a stunning hi-def video feed. To view the feed, you might use the free VideoLAN Project vlc program. (1) Select Media:Open Network Stream. (2) Select UDP as the stream, enter 233.0.73.67 as the IP address, and use port 1234 (the default). (3) Press “play.”

Those of us with upper-floor offices facing the Grove are having a lot of fun watching the nestlings and their proud parents, and we invite everyone in the CSE community to join us.