How many of you have been waiting patiently for this blog??
Raise your hands, I can hear you breathing out there! Please tell your neighbors and friends we are back and better than ever.
The 2014 season at the MN Bound Eaglecam is about to start and let me be the first to welcome all of our old friends and the new ones that will be joining us! We here at the cam, all the mods, Broadband Corp and MN Bound hope we will have another very successful season and that you will all be here to see every moment of it with us.
The cam is offline right now due to some power problems. The controller that handles all the power from the solar arrays decided to give up the ghost. This was discovered after BBC had shutdown the cam due to low batteries during the first large snowstorm of the year in December. New parts were ordered and they arrived a few days ago. BBC went to the nest site and retrieved the old components and will be replacing them on their “motherboard” this week. Hopefully they will be installed back at the nest site soon after. Also one half of the batteries froze after the controller fried so those will need replacement, too. I do not know if BBC has received the batteries yet. If not I hope they will get them soon.
At the moment we are hoping to be up and running in mid-February as we have been saying in the Saturday chats. But if it takes a little longer to fix the power problems we have some wiggle room in that Mom usually doesn’t lay until the first two weeks of March. It would be nice to see some nestorations but I will be glad to have the cam back up to just catch Mom laying the 1st egg of the season.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way I’d like to say some things about a few other things.
First, I’d like to welcome three new (well, mostly new) moderators to the MN Bound Eaglecam. They are Pfernf1, Bdogmm5858, and jreagle.
Welcome!
As you may recognize jreagle is rejoining us after helping mod during the first half of the season last year. Pfern is a mod at several other cams and is a great one to have with us. Bdog is a chatter at several nests and we dragged him (and his cheetos) kicking and screaming into the mod corps just so we would never run out of snacks. He has been honing his skills on the Saturday chats and seems to fit in very well on The Best Mod Team On The Net!™ Welcome again to all!
Second, a point of personal privilege. Myself and the rest of the moderators here at MN Bound are just chatters like everyone else. We are not kings, queens, rulers, lords or gods. We are a group of people just like you that started out watching cams and chatting in the SS and IRC and learned a lot along the way and have now been asked to help you have a good experience while watching our and other cams. We have been empowered to keep order in the chats and to that end we can censor, kick and ban a chatter if needs be.
If you chat at any of the other nests you will know that they have a laundry list of rules. We only have one rule here, “Be Nice”.
What does that mean?
It means we expect you to adhere to the basic rules of the net. No all caps posts, no trolling, no strings of letters or symbols in posts…the general things that are expected in chats and forums across the net.
Our mods have been asked to use their judgement in deciding whats “Nice”. We aren’t always right or fair but we will err on the side of caution every time. There have been examples at other cams of SS and chat getting out of hand. We will not let that happen here. We want all of our chatters and perchers to have a great time while they are on the nest.
Third, while I am at it, if you do have a comment, complaint, suggestion or rant about something that happened on the nest please DO NOT call Broadband Corp or MN Bound about it. They were actually considering closing the cams down permanently due to the volume of calls they were receiving because it was interfering with conducting their regular business. This cam is provided by them as a service, it earns them nothing but the goodwill of their viewers, and if it becomes a burden to them they will shut it down. So, please, no calls!
If you have something to say please post it in the comments here and we will respond to it as quick as we can. I will ask MN Bound if they can set up a “Suggestion Box” where you can post anything you think they need to know. Or you can send a private message on The MN Bound LIVE Eagles Facebook Page.
Well this has gotten long so I will save a few more things to say until the next time. I hope you are all looking forward to another great season on the nest like we are. Pull up a branch and experience it with us!!
TalonStrike
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below . Also, we'll be updating our official MN Bound LIVE Eagles Facebook Page regularly so you can follow along, like, or share with your friends. We have several site moderators to help give optimal information to all that want to learn more about these magnificent birds.