Raspberry Pi nest cameras – an affordable tool for remote behavioural and conservation monitoring of bird nests

1. Bespoke (custom-built) Raspberry Pi cameras are increasingly popular
research tools in the fields of behavioural ecology and conservation,
because of their comparative flexibility in programmable settings, ability
to be paired with other sensors, and because they are typically cheaper
than commercially built models. 2. Here we describe a novel, Raspberry
Pi-based camera system that is fully portable and yet weatherproof –
especially to humidity and salt spray. The camera was paired with a
passive infra-red sensor, to create a movement-triggered camera capable of
recording videos over a 24-hr period. We describe an example deployment
involving “retro-fitting” these cameras into artificial nest boxes on
Praia Islet, Azores archipelago, Portugal, to monitor the behaviours and
interspecific interactions of two sympatric species of breeding
storm-petrel (Monteiro’s storm-petrel Hydrobates
monteiroi and Madeiran storm-petrel Hydrobates castro)
during their chick-rearing periods. 3. Of the 138 deployments, 70% of all
deployments were deemed to be “Successful” (Successful was defined as
continuous footage being recorded for more than one hour without an
interruption), which equated to 87% of the individual 30 s videos. The
bespoke cameras proved to be easily portable between 54 different nests
and reasonably weatherproof (~14% of deployments classed as “Partial” or
“Failure” deployments were specifically due to the weather/humidity), and
we make further trouble-shooting suggestions to mitigate additional
weather-related failures. 4. Here we have shown that this system is fully
portable and capable of coping with salt spray and humidity, and
consequently the camera-build methods and scripts could be applied easily
to many different species that also utilise cavities, burrows, and
artificial nests, and can potentially be adapted for other wildlife
monitoring situations to provide novel insights into species-specific
daily cycles of behaviours and interspecies interactions.