04/16/25 Ugh, I’m having trouble getting the Cavity Cam streaming again after a short power outage we had last night. I’ve contacted Jorge and I’m confident that he’ll be able to troubleshoot this better than me and get it fixed. Any case, we’re on it. Pete
04/15/25 3:30 PM PST Cox Communication will be shutting down our internet and telephones starting around 4PM today for updates, service, etc. and they may not be restored until late tonight. So if the cams are down during this time that’s likely the reason. Pete
04/8/25 12PM PST IMPORTANT By now I suspect you all know that I had a major meltdown with the Starr Ranch website, including this BNOW cam page. But if you can see this, at least it’s been partly fixed. In the meantime Gretchen is going to try to drill deep and restore this page so that the comments are current and not missing the last two years or so… Though she might not be able to get to this until Thursday 4/10. But feel free to comment now as usual; they should appear normally. I’m also about to try to restore the 4 video feeds. So if you don’t see them now please wait a bit and refresh the page. I’m hoping I’ll have this done before 1PM PST.
Sorry about all this and thanks for your understanding and patience. Pete
1/23/23 I have been working with Jorge to try to fix all the cams. But the problems are a little bit baffling. I still don’t know why the Trail and the Limb cam aren’t working and Jorge recently identified a failed hard drive in the PC that powers the Cavity and Bat cams. So I’m trying to deal with all this but the fixes haven’t been straight forward. Sigh… Pete
8/22/22 Hey y’all, I’m really sorry about all the cam probs and will try to fix them ASAP. Was taking a little vacay last week but now am back in the saddle. Any case, I think the Cavity and Bat cam are now back up after a little switcher meltdown that I luckily was able to quickly fix. But the Trail and Limb cams are still frustrating me about why they aren’t working. Nonetheless will try to focus more on fixing them tomorrow. Thanks again for your patience. Pete
8/8/22 Trail and Limb cam update. I’m having a lot of trouble trying to isolate why these cams aren’t working again. Typically, when we have a power outage they automatically come back online when power is restored. But this time it didn’t happen and I have yet to figure out why not. I will keep trying and appreciate your patience. BTW, being so darn hot here these days just adds to my frustration… Thanks, Pete
8/6/22 OK, the Cavity AND Bat cams should now both be back up, though I still need to troubleshoot the Nest Cams that are on the Limb and Trail. I’m quite sure I’ll figure them out, but for now that they didn’t automatically come back after our power was restored baffles me. Stay tuned… Thanks, Pete
8/4/22 Tomorrow, Friday August 5, SCEdison will be cutting off our power to do some maintenance. This will likely be between 9AM and 3PM PST, so the cams will be off. When power is restored it will take me a bit to recreate the YouTube Cavity and Bat cam URLS and restore them to the page. Thanks.
Pete
3/4/22 I cleaned the bat cam lens today so hopefully you now have a clearer view of the box. Am also looking into buying a new cavity cam that has a built in mic so I can replace the current cam and not have to deal with a separate mic. So stay tuned. In meantime pls know I’m peddling as fast as I can… Thanks. Pete
1/28/22 I’m really sorry, folks. I’m just having a lot of trouble getting the cavity cam to show again on the page. Jorge and I are in touch so hopefully will be able to figure out soon. Pete
1/27/22 Sorry, but I’m having trouble getting the Cavity and Batbox cam YouTube feeds restarted after our power was restored around 4:30PM PST today. I just contacted Jorge who I know will be able to bail me out of this mess as he always has… In the meantime, thanks for your patience. Pete
1/27/22 Cams will be down for most of today as SC Edison replaces a power pole. Should be back up again around 5PM PST. Pete
12/09/21 We have been part of the CA Mountain Lion Project for a very long time with many cougars having been GPS collared at Starr Ranch and, as of last count, at least 5 using Starr Ranch’s Bell Canyon as a major movement corridor. Recently, The CMLP partnered with FLOAT to try to raise a few bucks via T-shirt sales. So if interested, visit: https://float.org/collections/california-mountain-lion-project. Thanks, Pete
11/28/21 Cavity cam should be back up. Sorry for the delay. As usual, Jorge helped walk me though the process once again… Only thing left to do is try to figure out why the Cavity and Bat cams don’t auto play when you load the page. Pete
11/26/21 Our power is back on as of 11AM PST and I was able to recreate the YouTube stream for the Bat Cam and get it back up. But am having trouble with the Cavity Cam. May turn out to be a cam hardware problem. Any case, I’ll attack this problem early next week. Will be a lot of cleaning up of wiring and connections, which I hope are the easy fixes to the current problem as well as the flaky audio and interference often seen on the video. Never a dull moment… Pete
11/25/21 Cams are down due to high winds staring last night and SCEdison cut our power for fire/safety reasons (There’s a 12KV power line that provides us our electricity running over almost a mile of dry grass and coastal sage scrub – so we get it…) Any case, winds are supposed to be calm again by tomorrow AM (Friday). If so, and and as soon as we get our electricity back, I’ll relaunch the cams. Pete
11/12/21 Thanks to some tips from scylla and Jorge – and me finally realizing that I had copied the wrong link, DOH!!! – all 4 cams should be up again. Sorry for the delay. Pete
11/11/21 Still having problems getting new YouTube feeds going for the Cavity and Bat cams. At least Firefox doesn’t like it although it was just a cut and paste of a new URL over an old one. Pete
11/10/21 I’m having trouble relaunching the Cavity and Bat Box streams. I’ve contacted Jorge, who as we all know is a whiz at this. So I suspect he’ll get them back up ASAP. Pete
11/9/21 SC Edison has to do a pole repair at Starr Ranch so our power will be down today from about 11AM thru 3PM PST. All cams will be off during this time. Also, it may take me a while to get two of the feeds back up that use YouTube streaming once the power comes back on. They’ll need new URLs. Thanks, Pete
8/12/21 I just took the HOFI cam offline and will put it back up if/when the HOFI’s return next spring. Chances are high that they will. Pete
5/11/21 I just took the Trail Cam offline and replaced it with a House Finch cam for now. I just noticed today that the HOFI’s had a nest at our office and, as luck would have it, the cam from last season was already in place. However, I’ll still monitor the trail cam and post vids when something interesting walks by. Like Earlier this Morning…
3/16/21 Interesting that the male has been a no-show for a while. Could be something happened to him, but also could be that he’s getting in the “mode” of roosting outside the cavity as he eventually has in the past as chicks start hatching and it starts to get a little crowded in the cavity. However, it seems a bit early for that. Any case, let’s just see how things unfold. Pete
3/14/21 Hmmmm, 32 days since first egg laid? First hatch should be soon…
In meantime, for those who sent me their t-shirt info as part of your egg pledge I need a little more time than anticipated to send them to you. I’m reluctant to go to the post office due to this covid mess. However, I’m fully set up at the ranch to weigh and print correct postage. The down side is that the USPS is getting pickier about what they’ll allow to be left at our mailbox for pickup. They’ve twice returned a t-shirt to Wynne that had the correct postage. It was because it was “bulky” that they didn’t accept it (?!). And this was not done by our really great mail carrier, Tim. It had gone through the system after he picked it up so he was compelled to return it. Any case, I ask for your patience. You’ll eventually get your t-shirt. Thanks. Pete
3/3/21
Thank you EVERYONE who donated to the 2021 Egg Pledge! This means A LOT to Sandy and me and really helps Starr Ranch. And also to PLowrie who kept this all organized so well!
For those who donated $5 or more, this is the T-shirt link for you to go to so you can provide the info I need to send you a Starr Ranch T-shirt. It uses the “old” Starr Ranch website look so there might be some bad links in the right side bar. But the form should work fine.
Note: I have plenty of T-shirts except that I’m out of Short Sleeve Adult Medium. Sizes tend to run large so, if you think you’re a medium, a small would probably work. Pete
2/24/21 Latest egg dates:
#1 – 2/12/21 – 9:13 am
#2 – 2/14/21 – 12:39 pm
#3 – 2/16/21 – 5:52 pm
#4 – 2/18/21 – 9:38 pm
#5 – 2/21/21 – 2:03 am
#6 – 2/23/21 – 11:40 am
Pete
2/21/21 Thanks to all who are pledging a donation/egg or contribute to Starr Ranch in other ways! Given that Sandy and I have to raise a few hundred thousand dollars every year to keep the wheels on Starr Ranch, this all helps! Eggs laid as of today:
#1 – 2/12/21 – 9:13 am
#2 – 2/14/21 – 12:39 pm
#3 – 2/16/21 – 5:52 pm
#4 – 2/18/21 – 9:38 pm
#5 – 2/21/21 – 2:03 am
Pete
2/16/21 The Cavity and Bat Cams should now automatically play when you load the page. Jorge discovered that even if the code included the autoplay command, they wouldn’t because YouTube was reluctant to have embedded video that might have mic/audio suddenly start playing upon loading a page and blast the user with unexpected sound. So he found the code to have these two videos load with the sound defaulted to mute. Which is a non-issue because neither of these feeds has audio… Thanks, Jorge! Pete
2/7/21 Gretchen told me that the plugin that allows one to add a pic to a comment is no longer supported. So she’s looking for another one. Pete
2/6/21 The Limb cam is now running and also has an active mic in the vicinity of the cavity. But two things:
1) If you want to hear the audio make sure the mic (speaker icon) is clicked to “on” in (usually) the lower or upper right corner of the Limb cam feed.
2)There’s a longer delay before you see/hear the live Limb cam feed than the Cavity cam feed. So while you might hear audio from the Limb cam mic it likely won’t sync with the Cavity cam activity. Pete
2/1/21 This is part of the nuts and bolts needed to keep the cams going. But it’s fun for me. Love doing it. Just wish there weren’t so many tech glitches to deal with. Then again, that’s just part of the deal. Pete
1/30/21 I started working on replacing the PTZ cam today. But among other things, mice have chewed a bunch of wires so I have a lot of repairs to do and may have to pull new wires. So this may take some time. But I’m hoping that if not by tomorrow, maybe Monday things will be back to “normal” again. (But is there any such thing a “normal” any more…?) Pete
1/29/21 Trail cam change is done. Pete
1/29/21 I’m about to change the trail cam to a better, hopefully higher resolution, model so it may be down for a while. Also, when things dry out here a bit, tomorrow I’m going to go up to the cavity after dark and after the pair has left and install a static cam in place of the PTZ to view the limb activity. It will also have a mic so it should be able to pick up audio in the cavity as well. Pete
1/29/21 All – Please don’t put your email address in a comment. It’s way too easy for a bot to grab it and then start using it to spam you. If you want to get in touch with another viewer just send an email to me and I’ll email that person asking if it’s OK for me to share their email with you. I’m happy to do this. Pete
1/21/21 I’ve emailed Jorge about the constant cavity cam buffering. Will fix as soon as I hear from him. In meantime I removed the 360X270 cavity stream. Was redundant anyway and just wasting bandwidth. Pete
Pretty owl snoozing at home in the Ritz! SO good to see! Sorry to have disappeared. My brother -in-law crossed over suddenly two days before his 63 birthday. My dear Uncle a month before. On top of that…substitute teaching. 😳 Sending thoughts of love and peace your way! Have a
SPECTACULAR day my friends!
So sorry for your loses Possum. Hopefully the owl in residence this morning will put a smile on your face. Thinking about you! Patti
Excerpts from an email I had from Center for Biological Diversity:
============
When a five-year-old mountain lion was struck and killed by a car in June, she was pregnant with four kittens.
Rat poison was later found in all five of them.
The mountain lion known as P-54 was killed in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California, not far from where her mother was also struck and killed in 2018.
☹
🙁
Emma, have you been hit by the rain in your area? I’ve been in Sedona all week and we’ve had afternoon monsoons, but nothing like what’s been reported for Phoenix and Kingman.
Yes Meg, we have had recent monsoon activity that surprised us and that brought havoc to some, not us particularly. We have loved the rain
as it is so badly needed. But, the destruction that sometimes comes with the monsoons, folks could do without. How nice for you to be visiting in Sedona! 🙂
CAVITY CATCHUP
===============
It’s not that I lost my mouse snaps – it’s that I’ve done so many osprey-related ones since the mouse snaps that my folder has lost them! So this will have to do to represent them all:
The owl arrived during the evening of the 13th and left towards morning on the 14th.
Evening:
Morning:
If only someone interesting would arrive NOW, s/he’d have a beautiful stripe-free environment.
Oh! I’ve just remembered and fortunately I can remember the title was to do with “beetles” so I can find it… these were mostly on a pellet but they only showed up on the lighter thing (petrified feather? 😁 ) behind it – they invade every evening:
This is a fingers-crossed post, because I’ve worn myself out staying up too long watching elderly people slow-marching for hours on end – thank goodness most of them have had quite athletic lives – and worrying myself sick that a catastrophe will occur – there’s still time ☹
Thanks scylla, I miss the owl every time.
Turn off the screens and get some rest, x
Well… OWL didn’t stay home. At least Trish verified that I wasn’t just imagining things.
Nope, Owl was definitely real.
Cheers!
Owl is home
Logged in to find a bee-u-ti-full Owl staring back at me! Will it stay? Stay tuned…
No owls again today, but am so pleased that we have had visitors for longer than in previous years. May today bring “SPARKLING MOMENTS” to everyone! The AMAZING CLOUD FORMATIONS that greeted me earlier this morning definitely provided SPARKLING MOMENTS, plus a new orange canna flower in the pond AND a new water lily bloom! It’s only 9am. what more might the day bring!
HAPPY TUESDAY STARR RANCHERS! 🙂
Gosh! Don’t know how long it’s been since I have visited, it’s been a while though. No one home at this time and the Bat Channel is still out 😔. I hope you guys have a FABBY week! LOVE!
Hi Possum. Yes, we are definitely in a dry spell at the Ranch. Hope it turns around soon. Have a super day! Patti
And another Phooey day 🙁
And again ‘sigh’ 🙁
Well, DANG IT! Agree with you hundon1…..PHOOEY & SIGH…….
Looks like it has been a bit of a dry spell for cavity visits. Blessings to all Rex
CAVITY CATCHUP to 19:00 this evening.
===============
An owl was on the lip for 4 hours on the evening of the 7th, no-one since besides the odd mouse.
Another PHOOEY day, with bars on the cam. RATS!!!
Someone was remarking on posts not appearing until after one had posted onself – well that just happened to me too – I had refreshed but only saw your condolence post, then after ‘catchup’ this one appeared – I would have posted the catchup as a reply if I’d seen it.
Dear SCYLLA, HUNDON1, and any other members of the Commonwealth on this site – My deepest condolences to you on the death of Queen Elizabeth. She was always there, and now she is not. Very hard to get my mind around that for some reason. An amazing woman in so many regards, May She Rest in Peace.
My thoughts and prayers are with you all.
Thank you, Wynne :-*
Thank you Wynne ❤️
CAVITY CATCHUP
===============
Lots of mouse activity.
Night of 04 September:
Early morning of the 5th – owl was immediately suspicious on entry, checked pantry but didn’t go up into attic, soon took up position on the lip – but it decided to stay all day! SEE EMMA’s SNAPS BELOW. We seemed to have a lot longer coloured daycam than usual but this snap was the pantry-checking in the early morning:
The owl left at the usual hunting time, having had no visitors that I could see, but a mouse soon appeared after s/he left.
I’ve only done a couple of days but am drooping so will have to pick it up again later.
Warm wishes (maybe that should be “cool wishes”) to you all, SYAL.
Sending my sincere condolences to Scylla and Hundon1 for the loss of Queen Elizabeth today. May she rest in peace. Patti
Thank you Patti 😢
Thank you, Patti. It seems unreal.
No one home! Another phooey day!
Yep.
Guess it’s too hot for everybody.
Hi, Patti. Hope it is a bit cooler where you are.
I wish it were. It was 104 here today and yesterday was even hotter. Took Jim on 9/5 (his birthday) to the Graton Casino, about 20 minutes up the freeway, and my car was saying 111. Good grief! We have no air conditioning at home, so are living off of fans. The temp upstairs last night was still 6 when we went to bed. Not great for sleep! Hope yours is better Wynne. Patti
Patti, I’m in the same boat as you. No A/C, two fans – one by the computer and one by the bed. Today is 10th day in a row of 100+. “They” say tomorrow will be cooler, but that is moot unless I survive today and it is already 80 and humid. Hope you are cooler tomorrow also.
It’s a PHOOEY day 🙁
Definitely a phooey, phooey day!
Gonna join in with PHOOEY, PHOOEY, PHOOEY ! Where are
those wonderful critters?? 🙂
There is an owl on the lip. No idea how long it has been there.
Good Morning! What’s up Buttercups?
Empty Ritz this morning. Scylla! LOVE the snap of little mousie’s tail end. I miss the bats. 😔 Hope the cam will be back up soon.
Sending love and peace into the universe for each of my dear Starr Ranch friends.
It’s almost 8pm and the cutie is still in the Ritz! 🙂
Emma, great snaps! Thanks!
WOWZA!! 🙂
Beautiful emma 🙂
I see beautiful OWL LEGS on the Ritz cam!!!!
Just backed into the cavity, so now I can see the WHOLE OWL!!
Nice to see one Wynne. Happy Labor Day to all. Patti
Lots of mouse activity last night and a little bit tonight – but no owls.
This is to represent all that activity, sorry it’s not a face but it’s quite cute and there are no stripes 😉
Still no one home!
I put up my annual September owl and mushroom tree today!
Just stoppin’ by on this Sunday afternoon hoping that I would see
one or two of the BNOW beauties. Alas, there are none as has been the case recently. PHOOEY, once again! But I can use this space to wish one and all a wonderful upcoming week! 🙂
The owl had arrived at about 21:00 but just like another time recently it didn’t enter, just peeped and turned on the lip:
It was on the lip for 4-and-a-half hours (ish) before leaving.
Lots of mouse activity the previous night.
Someowl’s home!! Screen full of feathers.
Strange how these comments show up after you sign in. I swear this wasn’t here before I posted.
And of course this was in response to scylla’s post.
Still there now 🙂🦉
All quiet now.
There’s an OWL on the lip. I haven’t done any catchup yet, just got one osprey cam to finish off and then I’ll be right on it 😄
Hi Guys!
No one home right now….Bat cam is down….poo!
Be safe this weekend and may you find beautiful magic!
Somewhat belatedly – cos I did it but forgot to upload it and have just done it all over again before I realised 😲😲😲
31 August
2m01s