Alberta Goose Cam

Goose Cam points a camera at the pond in the field beside our house in Alberta and streams whatever is happening there. Several nesting families of Canada geese come back each year, ducks of various species share the water, and red foxes, moose, and deer turn up in the frame often enough to be worth waiting for.

What you get

One page, one stream, no account. The camera runs seasonally, while the geese are around. Some hours are a dozen birds floating in place. Others are a territorial dispute conducted at volume. Nothing is scripted. That is the entire appeal, and also why it is occasionally very boring.

Technical setup

The stream goes out through YouTube Live, which handles transcoding and distribution. The camera is a weather-resistant IP unit feeding a small server that manages encoding and watches for the stream dropping.

Why geese

Canada geese will share a pond peacefully with ducks one minute and chase a full-grown adult the next. That range is more entertaining than it has any right to be.

I also built a Canada Goose Simulator for the emulator project, which involved reading a great deal about goose behaviour. At some point the research became the hobby.

See also

• YouTube channel — notifications when the stream is live
• Building a Canada Goose Simulator — the text adventure about being a goose