Mike Snyder and his family have a love for birds, and they like inviting the birds over for something to eat so that the family can study them while they eat. So they put a birdfeeder outside of their house so that any passing feathered flying friend can stop and grab a bite to eat. Not just any bird feeder though. It was a family project and Mike and his family built the birdfeeder from scratch. "We constructed our bird feeder out of a clear Lowery’s beef jerky container with a screw-on type lid," Mike reports.

Now as we know, Nature can be just a bit shy, so getting a real close look at her may be difficult. But thanks to the help of the XCam2, Mike has set up the cameras to a motion sensor, so that whenever one of nature’s dainty creatures stops by, the rest of the family is alerted, Mike and his family can enjoy the scene without disturbing the scenery. "We switch between two feeders, one facing NE and the other facing SW," Mike reports on his setup.

And thanks to the World Wide Web, anybody can join Mike and his family in looking in on the birds. Mike’s created a website and part of that site he’s dedicated to the art of bird watching. As Mike says, "I started this page as a way for my kids to watch, identify and record the different birds that come to our humble eastern Iowa webcam bird feeders."

So with the click of a mouse, anyone can log on and see just who’s visiting Mike’s for a meal, or a quick snack. Mike’s setup is really quite simple, but very effective. "We have 2 X10 XCam2 wireless cameras mounted on the side of the house. HomeWatcher software detects the motion and sends the photos to the web," he says. And from there, you and I log on to the website, and we can click on the pictures for a closer look. And if, while you’re there, you decide that you’d like to learn just a little bit more about bird watching, Mike has several links that will take you to the best information on the web.

As Mike says regarding his kids and bird watching, "Hopefully they will learn something in the process and appreciate the interesting hobby of bird watching as I did when I was a kid." But then he adds, "I wish they had Webcams back then."

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