Chapter 5
Tweeting Bird Feeder
Both of my kids are bird lovers. They have had parakeets since they were toddlers and enjoy watching wild birds nest and feed outside their bedroom windows. But one of the chores that somehow always slips past us is refilling the feeders with birdseed. For a variety of reasons, there may be days, sometimes even weeks, that go by without a refill. Wouldn’t it be so much easier for the feeder to tell us when it needed to be refilled?
That need was the genesis of inspiration for this project, and what better way to receive the notification than via a tweet on Twitter. Interested friends and family members can follow the feeder and know when birds are feeding from it, when it needs a refill, and when the refill chore has been satisfied. (See Figure 9, Receive a Twitter notification from your bird feeder.)
Since we will already be tracking the refilling patterns via Twitter, let’s make the feeder broadcasts even more interesting by adding a homemade sensor on the feeder perch that will record when birds are enjoying a meal and for how long. Before posting the tweets, we will timestamp and record these events to a database so we can visualize feeding patterns over time.
Was April a more ravenous month for the birds compared to July? Are early mornings a busier time of day than late afternoons? What is the average time birds perch at the feeder? What are the time intervals between perches? How frequently does the feeder need to be refilled with seed? With the Tweeting Bird Feeder, you will be able to take on the role of field researcher to discover these and other feeding behavior questions. It’s time to fly!
Figure 9. Receive a Twitter notification from your bird feeder ...when birds are perching, as well as when seed needs replenishing.