Bird Photo Booth in Toronto - a big idea to help urban birds

[arob]

Hello Bird Watchers of Canada,

My name is Rob Campbell and i'm @roberrific on Twitter

I have a Bird Photo Booth that was listed on Kickstarter last year at this time - I bought online and had it shipped here from California.
Because I have an idea on how best to use it...

I'm hoping to take this bird photo booth on tour of Toronto business rooftops. Its a tour of bird friendly businesses across the GTA from the birds own point of view. In this way we could visit and record the residents of Toronto's avian neighborhoods for loyalty programs software sponsor. ie Meet the lake birds, shore birds, orchard park song birds, meadow larks, pigeons and we inner city sparrows and blackbirds. We want to document who visits the feeder at what time where and when and who gets their picture taken where and why and how . . . theres a lot to learn by just leaving a booth on the roof.

At the heart of the rig is an iPhone 5 with a finely honed motion detector app that triggers the phone to take close-up pictures of birds eating bird seed from a dish in the foreground. Does anyone know a bird seed sponsor that might donate their wares? Im looking.
The shots are so close you can see each bird's unique personality.

Birds of Toronto is a website / urban bird awareness photo contest project that will showcase the best of the best photos on behalf of the companies that host the booth.

I want to organize a real live photo contest for businesses to host the bird photo booth to give them all more reason to admire each other's bird portraits at a live event in Oct 2014.

Toronto Businesses will compete to host the photo booth and record their birds - they will become part of history as the various species that live in their nearby trees bushes are logged and categorized and written up on the Birds of Toronto website and other places online, like perhaps right here in this discussion forum? in this thread..?

The contest is simple - show off your best bird shots in four categories - businesses win prizes donated by the other competing businesses at an award show in Oct 2014.
Its win / win as each bird friendly business gets great environmentally friendly marketing mentions, while overall the association increases awareness to the plight of Toronto birds.
Please do leave feedback and tell me what I don't know.. . What mistakes am I about to make?
Is this a good idea? Will it work? How can you help? If you have a blog you can help Birds of Toronto , the bird photo booth project, by blogging about it.

[Trillian Flummox]

Looks like a very cool gadget and your project sounds very ambitious! I am not an expert on feeders, however I do know that sometimes it can takes many days or weeks for birds to find and accept a feeder, depending on the location and species, so this may be problematic if you're hoping to move the booth around the city over the course of one season. Also, you know that birds can be messy right? Feeders need to be cleaned frequently to prevent the spread of disease and if your feeder attracts a flock of House Sparrows or Pigeons (as many inner city feeders will), the surrounding area will get covered in poop. Just my initial thoughts.

Best of luck with your project!

-kris ito

[arob]

Thanks for your reply Trillian, readers



Its been about 40 days and the Birds of Toronto website has launched to tell the story of Toronto Bird Photo Booth Business Challenge 2014 in weekly updates.  Please do investigate

[Raven11:11]

Bravo, now tell me where the birds have gone???

I have seen a 99% decrease - read my prev posts.