Adding an HD/IR camera to a nesting box

I did a fun small project today.

We have four nesting boxes in our backyard. We see birds flying in and out, and it’s fun to see them carrying twigs and fluff into the boxes. But being there when the babies leave is a matter of lucky timing. So we want to be able to see the activity inside the boxes.

There’s a small industry in consumer-grade wildlife cameras. The choices include the camera type (e.g., for nesting boxes vs. feeders vs. hedgehog boxes vs. trails vs…), wireless vs. wired, video quality, with/without IR capabilities, with/without audio, and pre-installed in a box or a solo camera that you install into a box you already own.

I wanted to try one. So I purchased a Green Feathers WiFi Bird Box Camera (3rd generation).

This sucker has a 2MP 1/3″ CMOS image sensor and it transmits 1920×1080 at 20 fps. It has motion detection, sound detection, customizable motion and sound alarms, night vision, automatic white balance, and other goodies. The lens is manually focusable.

It transmits video only to the Green Feathers iPhone/iPad/Android app over the local network, so it’s not a public webcam. But holy cow it’s a lot in a small package for about $170 US. The video is better quality than my five-year old car’s back-up camera.

The construction quality is excellent. The installation instructions were OK but could be simpler. It was easy in the end.

After some drilling and coaxing of cables I had the camera situated at the top of the interior looking down, with the cables exiting through one of the ventilation slots. It doesn’t look half bad.

One subtle gotcha not in the instructions… The lens has a manual focus with a locking ring. Most of the activity will probably be under infrared light conditions, and infrared light has longer wavelengths than visible light and so it focuses at a different point. So I adjusted the focus to be best for infrared. With the lens’ depth of field I’m not sure it made a lot of difference but every little bit helps.

I’ll post pics or video of nesting birds next year. If I don’t forget.