All is quiet on the Western front.

The winter morning is dark and cold, and I can’t see the bird feeder hanging in my backyard. It’s too early for most things, except bird watching in Panama, thanks to The Cornell Lab’s live bird cam.

The birds, in their Eastern time zone, have two hours of the day on me, and they’re making the most of it. Species I’ve never heard of peck away at slices of unpeeled banana and halved citrus fruits that dangle from branches over a feeding table littered with more fruit. The morning is warm and moist in their tropical paradise, already 75 degrees, which sounds mighty nice right now, compared to our 16 on this day.

The background noise of the low mountains of Cerro Gaital, where Cornell’s Panama fruit feeder live cam is located, is comforting. Bird song trills through the air, and you can hear the Rio Guayabo stream flow by. The feeding table is about 40 feet from Canopy Lodge, an ecolodge that’s now tugging at my vacation heartstrings.

Here I sit, at my kitchen table, doing my own pecking, but at a laptop, as I watch a crimson-backed tanager cruise by for a quick nibble. And guess what? Panama squirrels are no different than our own greedy bird food-thieving squirrels. Find this live cam and others by Cornell Lab by going online to allaboutbirds.org/cams.

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You and I won’t be the only gawkers. Cornell’s live cams, part of Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a nonprofit devoted to bird conservation, are watched by millions of people.

“In the last six to eight years, people have watched for 4 billion minutes. That’s like 7,600 years,” said Charles Eldermire, bird cams project leader for Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“When we crossed that first billion minutes threshold, that was cool. A billion minutes takes you back to the birth of Christ. All the people watching had spent that amount of time watching our content. It’s only increased since then.”

Cornell began posting live content from nest box cams in 1998, offering a new photo every 30 seconds. In 2012, better technology allowed it to jump into livestreaming. There are six or seven live cams now operating. During breeding season, that number increases to about 15.

“The lab was quick to recognize the compelling power of connecting people to birds on the internet — real live birds, not a documentary, not a bird expert telling you what you’re looking at,” Eldermire said, “but trying to spark somebody’s interest and emotional connection because they’re having an authentic experience the way you would if you saw a bird in your backyard.”

Current cams include royal albatrosses in New Zealand or the very intimate Sapsucker Woods feeding station in Ithaca, N.Y., where Cornell is. The other day a black-capped chickadee indulged in some snacks inches from the camera, giving me a chance to ogle its tiny, adorable face and feathers.

Eldermire echoes the joy in being able to watch a bird up close, particularly after he sets up a new camera.

“Seeing birds through the camera for the first time is an incredible feeling,” he said. “And the bird doesn’t know it’s being watched. It’s the ultimate voyeurism. You no longer have to worry about your behavior affecting that bird’s behavior. You get to sit back and let the bird be a bird. It’s a gift.”

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I’m also partial to the cam in Ontario, Canada, where it was recently a brr-worthy -2 degrees. If you time it right, you can hear the crunching of Tammie Haché’s feet across the snow, as she cleans and restocks the feeders midmorning. Haché, who hosts the Ontario cam, patiently wipes snow out of the feeders, scrapes old seed hulls off the feeder tray, then refills them with peanuts and black oil sunflower seeds. Task accomplished, she crunches the snow as she walks away off camera. If you’ve spent time zoning out to ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos on YouTube, you know the calm and tingly feeling you can get by watching and hearing such movements.

“That’s Tammie, a devoted bird watcher,” Eldermire said. “She’s in a cool place. We get neat songbirds you’d never see in the Lower 48.”

The women in my family are as devoted to the cams as I am. My mom is glued to Cornell’s great horned owls cam in Savannah, Ga. When mama owl finally turned in her nest, revealing her face and at least two eggs to my mom for the first time, she fired off an excited email telling me to tune in. And my aunt in Florida also can’t stop: “I, too, am addicted to these bird cams! I especially like the Ontario one. It’s snowing there this morning and (there are) so many different birds. It brings back wonderful memories of shoveling snow paths to the bird feeder in Vermont and feeding/watching the birds. I sure do miss that.”

The cams are wonderful, no doubt, but Eldermire reminded me of the potential down side: Mother Nature does not always provide happy endings when it comes to the cycle of life. Things happen in the nests and at feeders that can cause cam watchers extreme anxiety. Baby birds don’t always make it, such as the hawk nestling that had an injury around its mouth and didn’t fledge the nest with its siblings. A wildlife vet was able to bring the nestling inside and found internal injuries. The bird didn’t survive.

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There was also the bald eagle that brought a cat back to the nest as dinner.

“You can imagine how people felt about that,” Eldermire said.

And the blue heron nest that got attacked in the middle of the night by a great horned owl.

“People said you need to do something about the owl,” he said. “We don’t. I hear you, and we care about the herons, but also about the owl. Two years later we have a camera on a great horned owl nest and suddenly everybody’s cheering when they bring in something. It’s very much in the eye of the beholder. If there’s something natural happening on camera we don’t intervene. But if there’s an anthropogenic source for that potential bad thing happening we would consider intervening, if it seems safe for everybody and for us.”

Cornell Lab Cams are only one of many live bird cams set up around the globe, but what I like about these particular cams are the photos and descriptions of birds that might visit the feeders that run alongside the cam on the website, so you’re not left wondering what the heck was that orange-billed, yellow-footed bird with the call like a firetruck siren. (That’s a made-up bird. Please don’t get angry with me, birders.)

There’s also the festive and populated Allen Birdcam, which can be found online at allenbirdcam.com. In a suburban garden in Pretoria, South Africa, visitors include Diederik cuckoo, Fischer’s lovebird, spotted eagle-owl and fruit bats.

Closer to home is the Redstone live cam along Colorado 133, where a block of suet, a bird feeder and pinecones covered with probably some kind of nut butter quietly hang from a post. Find it online here: coloradowebcam.net/camera/bird-watching-redstone-webcam-hwy-133.

And closer yet is the live cam set up in the parking lot outside Wild Birds Unlimited at 3350 N. Union Blvd. Owner Heather Weber-Langvardt was inspired by The Cornell Lab cams, in particular the Panama fruit feeders and a hummingbird nest cam in California.

Find the store’s cam by going online to YouTube and searching for Wild Birds Unlimited of Colorado Springs.

“Cornell’s is in the middle of nowhere,” Weber-Langvardt said. “We thought it would be fun to do one that’s in a more urban setting.”

Contact the writer: 636-0270