Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
They have finally turned on the DuckCam (or PondCam, if you will) at Botany Pond. There’s a good view of nearly the entire Pond, and you are likely to see Armon there; in fact, he’s should be there now. A few minutes ago there was another pair that I drove off, as we don’t want to couples nesting at about the same time. Oh, I forgot to add the important note that Vashti has begun incubating her eggs at a secret location (I know where it is), and we should have ducklings in a bit less than four weeks!
Even the channel is visible now, to the right behind the lamppost.
Today I’m putting up an animal cam in lieu of Readers’ Wildlife Photos because I need to conserve the latter: I have only about two batches left. If you have some, send them in!
But this is one of the best animal cams I have seen, for it shows in real time a very rare animal: a brooding female kākāpō and her chick (Strigops habroptilus). This is the world’s only flightless parrot, and is found in New Zealand, where it evolved in the absence of mammalian predators. Now it’s highly endangered, with only a few hundred individuals left, but an intensive conservation effort by New Zealand is bringing them back. This effort includes putting all kākāpōs onto islands where potential predators birds have been removed. As Wikipedia notes,
The kākāpō is critically endangered; the total known population of living individuals is 236 (as of 2026). Known individuals are named, tagged and confined to four small New Zealand islands, all of which are clear of predators; however, in 2023, a reintroduction to mainland New Zealand (Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari) was accomplished. Introduced mammalian predators, such as cats, rats, ferrets, and stoats almost wiped out the kākāpō. All conservation efforts were unsuccessful until the Kākāpō Recovery Programme began in 1995.
Newsweek, via reader Ginger K, offers us a link to a live kakapo cam. This is the only such bird ever to be livestreamed with a cam, and here’s some information about the video below from Newsweek. I find the feed mesmerizing, and watched the female sleep for a while last night (it was day in New Zealand), sitting on her fluffy white chick and occasionally grooming herself and the chick.
Newsweek:
A quiet underground nest on a remote island off New Zealand’s coast is captivating viewers around the globe as the world’s largest parrot species is livestreamed.
The YouTube livestream, Kākāpō Cam, offers a continuous view inside the nest of Rakiura, a 24-year-old female kākāpō—one of just 236 left worldwide. Rakiura has been living beneath a rātā tree on Codfish Island, also known as Whenua Hou, off the country’s southern coast, where she hatched two chicks this breeding season.
Since January, the footage has offered unpolished, intimate glimpses of the nocturnal, flightless parrot. Rakiura shuffles in the nest, preens her green feathers, settles her body protectively over her chick, and occasionally leaves under the cover of darkness to forage before returning to feed. At times, the screen shows little movement at all—just the soft rise and fall of a bird resting, giving viewers a rare, real‑time look at a species most will never see in person.
“This is the only camera in a kākāpō nest this season, and the only nest we’ve ever streamed live,” Deidre Vercoe, operations manager for Kākāpō at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC), told Newsweek. “Kākāpō Cam provides insights that help guide us to support their recovery, while also giving people around the world a chance to connect with this incredible species.”
. . .While most female kākāpō choose new nesting spots each breeding cycle, Vercoe said Rakiura has returned to the same site every season—allowing conservationists to reinforce the nest and carefully plan a reliable camera setup months in advance through the DOC’s Kākāpō Recovery team.
Hands‑on fieldwork began in October 2025 and will continue for most of the year, involving around 30 DOC staff, specialist support teams and 105 volunteers, each donating two weeks of their time.
The team also added drainage and a small access hatch to protect eggs and chicks without disturbing her natural behavior.
The camera was first trialed during the 2022 breeding season, but this year’s stream went live in time to capture egg‑laying and hatching for the first time.
Rakiura successfully hatched two genetically important chicks on February 24 and March 2, though the older one was later transferred to a foster mother so she could focus on raising the remaining chick, Nora‑A2‑2026, now the star of the livestream. The team will check on the chick every three days until it is one month old.
Okay, enough information. Watch below live NOW. If mother Rakiura is out, you’ll still see the chick. When I put this up at 8:15 a.m. Chicago time, it will be 2:15 a.m. in New Zealand, and it looks like mom is still sleeping. Watch from time to time so you can see the chick. She’s very solicitous of it and grooms it often.
Lagniappe: a tweet on this season, a great one for baby parrots, from New Zealand Conservation
And one of the best animal videos ever: a male kākāpō, Sirocco, shagging biologist Mark Carwardine while Stephen Fry looks on and narrates. This was from the BBC show “Last Chance to See,” about endangered species:
When I went to New Zealand a while back, I really wanted to see these birds, but you really can’t: you need a good reason to get to the islands where kākāpō are kept. To do that, you have to be somehow involved in their conservation. You can volunteer to live on the island for several months and help monitor the birds, but that’s a big commitment just to see them. However, if you want to help save them, you can donate here.
NPR reports on one of my favorite weeks of the year: Fat Bear Week, which extends from September 23-30. (see Wikipedia article here). As you may know, the bears at issue are those in Katmai National Park, and Wikipedia tells us how the ursids qualify:
In order to qualify for Fat Bear Week, brown bears of the Katmai National Park must have been spotted catching sockeye salmon at the Brooks River. A 1.5-mile (2.4 km) section of the river, which has webcams, is used to choose eligible bears. Bears must be seen not just in the fall but also in the summer season as well.[27]
The subjective contest is a single-elimination tournament. Each day, two bears are presented in a match-up, identified by numbers. The bear with the most votes advances to the next round. In order to evaluate which bears have gained the most weight in preparation for hibernation, the public is able to view before and after photos of specific bears, watch them on livestream feeds, and read their biographies. The biographies include information on their feeding habits, personality traits, and physical features. The winner of the final match-up is named the tournament champion.
The contest was started in 2014, and Otis has won three times, while Grazer won twice. (Otis wasn’t there last year and he may have crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
The bears are brown bears (Ursus arctos), sometimes known as grizzly bears or “grizzlies”: a subspecies from further south. The only larger land predator is a close relative, the polar bear, which you saw in the last post.
Click below to read more about the contest:
An excerpt:
Fat Bear Week, when people get to pick their favorite Alaskan brown bear bulking up for hibernation, is coming early this year. The annual online competition that normally starts in early October will instead start on Sept. 23. Katmai National Park and Preserve officials say the bears are magnificently plump ahead of the tournament.
“This year’s salmon run was extraordinary, with salmon numbers surpassing anything seen in recent memory,” Matt Johnson, the park’s interpretation program manager, told NPR via email. “As a result, the brown bears of Katmai are well-nourished and looking for other things to do besides scrap[p]ing with each other for food.”
The bracket for Fat Bear Week 2025 will be revealed on Sept. 22, when fans will see where familiar names of past champions, such as 128 Grazer, 480 Otis and 747— aka Bear Force One, estimated to weigh a whopping 1,400 pounds — stack up against new challengers. The single-elimination tournament starts on Sept. 23 and runs through Sept. 30, when a new champion will emerge. Fat Bear Junior, for bear cubs, started on Thursday.
Organizers expect votes to come from across the planet.
“Over one million votes were cast for the bears in 2024 from one hundred countries,” the park said as it announced this year’s dates.
The brown bears of Katmai occupy the rarest strata of celebrity: captivating and oblivious, thanks to the “bearcams” that beam their activities in the scenic Brooks Falls and other areas to online viewers around the world.
. . .The abundance of salmon in Katmai National Park and Bristol Bay in southern Alaska is contributing to a drop in conflict among the bears this year compared to the 2024 competition, which was delayed when one large bear killed another. Voters then propelled Grazer to a landslide win over the massive 32 Chunk, a bear that, months earlier, had killed one of Grazer’s cubs.
“This year there was less congregating at Brooks Falls, less fighting, and — astonishingly — noticeably more playtime with each other,” Johnson said.
Here’s a photo of Otis, four-time winner for gaining the most weight. Photo from the National Park Service:
And the Explore Live livecam of the bears fishing. Right now they’re showing highlights, which are awesome enough by alone, but wait until it goes live!
I suggest that when September 23 rolls around, you go to the Fat Bear site below (click on icon) to see the contestants and cast your vote. (There’s already been a fat cub contest, in which yearlings compete for weight gain. The winner is unnamed.) Here are Da Roolz for Bearz:
Matchups are open for voting September 23-30 between 12 – 9 p.m. Eastern / 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Pacific.
This is a single elimination tournament. For each match-up, vote for the bear you believe best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears. The bear with the most votes advances to the next round. Only one will be crowned Fat Bear Week champion. Meet the bears, fill out your bracket, predict your fat bear winner, and campaign for your candidate.
The contestants aren’t up yet, so have a look on September 23 between noon and 9 p.m. Eastern U.S. time. It’s enormous fun to vote, and of course the fatter bears have a better chance to make it through the winter.
I hope Otis shows up this year: he was a fatty, but may not have made it through the year.
Reader Patricia kindly left us with something to look at while I’m gone: the webcam of seals and other wildlife living on Año Nuevo Island off the coast of California. As you can read below, Patricia works here.
Here is the location from Wikipedia:
Patricia gives us the lowdown (indented), and the link to the webcam is below.
Año Nuevo Island is a small island (~9 acres) off the central coast of California, ~60 mi. south of San Francisco . The webcam is supported by California State Park. The camera shows the SE end of the island in 3 views, each about 30 sec.
View #1 is a sandy beach that extends toward the mainland with a collapsing catwalk across the center of the scene. In winter hundreds of Northern elephant seals (Miroungaangustirostris) pup and mate here. Currently (Aug.) the beach is used by thousands of California sea lions (Zalophuscalifornianus) and a few molting male e-seals. Sea lions sometimes sleep atop these king size ’Sealy Posturpedics’. If there is a point break, the sea lions enjoy surfing it. In the foreground there are some of the thousands of nesting Brandt’s cormorants (Urilepenicillatus). The chicks are almost full grown now, but still ‘fuzzy’
View #2 shows the top terrace of the island and the deteriorating light keeper’s house (built 1906, fog horn station began in 1872 – replaced by a buoy in 1948). The terrace and house are occupied by thousands of sea lions and cormorants. A few Western gulls (Larusoccidentalis) attempt to nest amidst the fray. Fog allowing, the ridge on the mainland shows a very ragged tree line, the result of the 2020 CZU lightning complex fire. It was dense forest pre-fire.
View #3 is a rocky cove on the ocean side of the island occupied by hundreds of sea lions and their pups can often be seen playing here. Brown pelicans (Pelecanusoccidentalis) can sometimes be seen roosting below the camera.
On a warm day, if you check the camera at midday and then again in the early evening, you can see a mass migration of the sea lions from down on the cooler, wetter beaches up to the dryer terrace.
I’ve been working at Año Nuevo for 30+ years including about a dozen when I spent a good part of the summer on the island. It is often chilly and very windy there, necessitating watch cap plus hard hat (for gull strikes of both feet and guano, they have incredible aim and adjust for the wind), gloves, five layers on my torso and knee pads since most movement was on hands and knees. If you have questions, ask in the comments and I’ll try to answer them.
Click on the screenshot and bookmark it for hours of fun and enlightenment. If your browser doesn’t work (I have trouble on Chrome), try another. The link is also here.
From the webcam’s site:
The Año Nuevo Island camera provides viewers with spectacular views of Año Nuevo Island live. Several angles are displayed for 30 seconds before the camera pans to the next position. The camera is live from 8:00 am – 5:00 pm.
Located 1/2 mile from the mainland, Año Nuevo Island is not accessible for the general public. It has been set aside with other sections of Año Nuevo State Park as a Natural Preserve, dedicated as habitat for a diversity of wildlife. Although now a home for marine mammals and nesting birds, evidence of human occupation is still evident from the historic light station buildings that began operation in 1872. These buildings were abandoned in 1948 and some still stand today.
Don’t forget to bookmark the Snoozy the Squirrel animalcam so you can see her sleeping in the nest or coming and going. I’m pretty sure she’s pregnant and is going to have babies, so keep an eye on the nest.
Snoozy is an eastern gray squirrel (Scirus carolinensis), and their gestation period is about 40-45 days after mating. The young are born without fur, but quickly grow up and leave the nest within 50 days. In the meantime, they’re ineffably cute. With luck, they’ll be born and stay in this nest, though females often move their litters around to escape predation (they seem pretty safe on that ledge). Females have about two litters per year, and this must be the second.
Click on the screenshot below to see her, and don’t forget to click on the “forward” arrow at the lower left.
Snoozy’s cam was down for the weekend, as it has to be reset daily, but she’s back, though right now she’s out foraging. Click on screenshots to see her (or her empty nest. The first photo is from a few minutes ago. Some of her nest seems to have been displaced off the ledge, so perhaps she’s not pregnant after all (or perhaps Snoozy is a Man Squirrel!):
Don’t forget to bookmark the Snoozy the Squirrel animal cam so you can see her sleeping in the nest or coming and going. I’m pretty sure she’s pregnant and is going to have babies, so keep an eye on the nest.
Snoozy is an eastern gray squirrel (Scirus carolinensis), and their gestation period is about 40-45 days after mating. The young are born without fur, but quickly grow up and leave the nest within 50 days. In the meantime, they’re ineffably cute. With luck, they’ll be born and stay in this nest, though females often move their litters around to escape predation (they seem pretty safe on that ledge). Females have about two litters per year, and this must be the second.
Click on the screenshot below to see her, and don’t forget to click on the “forward” arrow at the lower left. This is what she’s doing right now, ergo her name.
Amy the Library Duck returned to her window this year, but fortunately she didn’t nest there. (We had a hard time with her last year, finally having to remove her ducklings after they hatched and jumped and to take them to rehab after mom didn’t know how to get to the nearest water since Botany Pond was dry. The water is a long way away, across several busy roads, and we tried to show her the way.)
But there’s better news this year: a squirrel, presumably a female, has built a nest on the same ledge where Amy nested. And in this case we don’t have to do anything, for baby squirrels don’t have to walk 1.5 miles to get to water. The ledge is isolated and well protected, and the squirrel has been adding leaves, dried and fresh, to the nest.
The squirrel has been named Snoozy, as she sleeps through the heat of the day. If you bookmark this webcam, look in once in a while as I’m pretty sure you’re shortly going to see baby squirrels: a vantage that few people get. And baby squirrels are adorable!
Click here or on the screenshot below. When you watch, be sure to press the “forward” arrow at the bottom left to see the live action (or lack of action). You can scroll back to see the squirrel’s activity over the past day. Stuff right now: move the dot all the way to the right.
Snoozy is there right now, and may be there all day. Have a look! (She was gone most of the morning, and you can’t see anything at night.) I took this picture about three minutes ago.
UPDATE: If the camera doesn’t work, nere are the squirrel friend’s instructions:
I just checked it a minute ago and it was fine. Snoozy is there snoozing away. The operator has it running on the Panopto service that I think is used for class stuff. I noticed it sometimes says “the webcast has ended” and then you have to push play again. Also on my browser it blocks autoplay so you have to push the play button to start it.
