Forward Vision’s MIC1 series-Pan, Tilt and Zoom (PTZ) CCTV cameras (known as Metal Mickeys) have been used at the Scottish Seabird Centre for remote wildlife watching.
The Scottish Seabird Centre is internationally renowned for colonies of seabirds, such as gannets, kittiwakes and puffins. Hundreds of thousands of them come each year to breed on islands such as the Bass Rock and the Isle of May.
Even in reasonable good weather, most of these rocky outcrops are difficult to land on. In the breeding season, people are discouraged from getting too close, partly to avoid disturbing the birds and seals and partly for their own safety: gannets are nearly the size of turkeys, dive at up to 60mph and have beaks that can do a lot of damage. The Seabird Centre’s live broadcasting system is a way to see the birds at close quarters, without disturbing the animals.
There are now seven Metal Mickeys in strategic locations on four of the islands, plus two on the mainland. They were installed by the Plymouth-based wildlife observation specialists, Outersight (UK). According to managing director Peter Barlow, they needed systems that could cope with a very hostile environment.
"You can get gusts of up to 100mph out there," he says, "and there’s a lot of salt spray which is very abrasive and corrosive. You look at other metalwork on the islands and it just rots, but the Mickeys stand up to it very well. I’ve just had a couple in for servicing. Opened them up and they’re as good as new."
He had tried other, more traditionally designed cameras but found them useless in the blustery conditions. "When we found the Mickey and saw how streamlined and compact a unit it was, it just shouts reliability. In fact the first camera we purchased is still fully operational on the site (from the MIC1-300 range). Since then the series has been updated and we are now installing the current MIC1-400 series. There’s no exposed cable, it’s very neat and the wind resistance is minimal. It’s so small and discreet that you hardly know it’s there, so it’s become a really big part of our business."
Outersight have been working with the Seabird Centre for over seven years, providing the technologies to bring wildlife scenes to people at the Centre’s virtual hub and to the rest of the world via the internet in a series of live wildlife webcams. The low-light capabilities of the cameras are well tested, as Peter Barlow says: "Scotland in the winter has little over three hours of daylight and the rest is dusk or dark so it’s imperative that the cameras deliver high quality images regardless of the lighting conditions. That coupled with the integrated wiper and flat viewing window on these cameras means we are able to obtain stunning pictures in bad weather. Some of the more remote cameras are powered by solar energy. On the Bass Rock and the Island of Craigleith, 12 photo-voltaic solar panels generate enough power, even in a Scottish winter, to keep the cameras and the microwave transmitters running.
See the Forward Vision product range at http://www.fvcctv.co.uk/products
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