Disclaimer & Data Accuracy
Applies to all Critter Crew Observatory public and VIP-tier pages • Public Access • No login required to view
A Note to Our Neighbors
If you live nearby, you have probably noticed the cameras around our house—including a couple that move. Because nobody wants to feel like their street is being fed into a corporate surveillance network, here is exactly what they are, what they do, and where the footage goes.
No Cloud Services, No Ring, No Flock. We are strictly privacy-focused. None of our cameras are connected to Ring, Nest, Flock, or any cloud camera service, neighborhood watch network, or license-plate database. Nearly all of them are local UniFi cameras, and every second of video—along with all of the AI that processes it—stays on our own equipment inside our house. No third-party company has access to our feeds, and no frames are sent to the cloud to be analyzed.
Two Separate Jobs. Our cameras do two very different things:
- Ordinary home security (Private): The cameras out front—including the moving camera in the front, the doorbell camera, and the cameras watching our walk, driveway, and the street—are for watching our house and packages at the door. The moving camera in the front is strictly for security, not wildlife.
- Backyard & critter watching (This Site): The reason this site exists is to watch the feeders, the bird baths, and the nightly paths of the neighborhood raccoons, opossums, skunks, and birds. Our backyard cameras—including the moving camera in the back—look only into our enclosed yard, with no view of the street.
How We Keep Only Animals on This Site. Because our front cameras can see the street, parked cars, and people walking past, what they see of the street is never meant to appear here. Every clip and still must pass through our local AI privacy filters before it can ever be published on this site:
- Animal-only triggers, then local AI screens out people and vehicles. First, our pipeline only pulls events that the UniFi camera hardware has already tagged as an animal—human and vehicle motion events are ignored from the start. Second, every new animal still and clip is inspected on our own hardware by a local AI screen. If a person or vehicle happens to be in the background—or if the AI isn't 100% sure—the clip is automatically quarantined and never published.
- License plates are blurred locally. On any front-facing camera that can see parked cars, a local plate-redactor blurs any license plate area before a clip can be published. If the blur check cannot be verified, the clip is withheld.
- All camera audio is stripped. Every wildlife clip is stripped of its sound track before it is published.
- The backyard moving camera tracks wildlife, never people. The moving camera in our enclosed back yard is driven by local software to follow animals between feeders. It is fenced by strict angle limits so it cannot look toward the house or over fences, and its white floodlights and alarms are permanently disabled. If a person enters the back yard, it immediately stops, turns away to a parked view, and waits until the yard has been clear for three minutes. No clip from it is ever posted if a person was seen within 30 seconds before or after the animal's visit.
- Security and doorbell cameras are excluded. Nothing from our doorbell camera or security-only cameras is ever published here.
No automated filter is perfect. If you ever spot yourself, your car, or your property on this site, let us know using the takedown instructions just below and it will be removed immediately. And if the way a camera is pointed ever bothers you, please tell us that too.
Informational Purposes Only
All content, telemetry data, and multimedia provided on this website are for general informational and entertainment purposes only. The information is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. Use of any information or data from this site is strictly at your own risk.
Weather & Sensor Data Disclaimer
Weather data, sensor metrics, and environmental telemetry presented on this site are collected from privately operated, non-certified consumer hardware. This data is subject to sensor inaccuracies, localized microclimates, network outages, and calibration variances. Do not use this data for safety-critical decisions, navigation, or emergency planning. For official emergency alerts and severe weather warnings, always consult official sources such as the National Weather Service (NWS) or local emergency management authorities.
Video Privacy & Media Takedown Requests
Video streams, motion clip highlights, and snapshot feeds are fixed automated sensors configured to monitor critter feeding stations, bird baths, and nocturnal runways on private property. The operator takes reasonable measures to avoid capturing adjacent private residences, and to keep public rights-of-way and identifiable personal data from being published.
Need a video clip, image, or livestream timestamp reviewed or taken down? If you believe your personal privacy, property, vehicle, or likeness was inadvertently captured, please submit an immediate takedown or redaction request to the node dispatch mailbox:
- Mailbox:
NodeDispatch [at] aaronsageek.com - Subject Line:
[Media Takedown Request] <Camera Feed or Date> - Details to Include: Approximate date and timestamp (US Central Time), camera location (e.g. Feeder Cam, North Runway, Lagoon View), and the clip URL or screenshot.
Verified requests are triaged directly through the NodeDispatch queue and promptly unlisted, masked, or permanently deleted (typically within 24 hours).
Privacy & Cookies
The public pages do not ask you to sign in, do not set cookies, and run no analytics, advertising or tracking scripts. In plain terms:
- Fonts from Google: Pages load their typefaces from Google Fonts (
fonts.googleapis.comandfonts.gstatic.com). Your browser requests them directly, so Google receives your IP address and browser details, as it does for any site that uses Google Fonts. Critter Crew Observatory does not send Google anything else. - Browser storage: The site stores one item in your browser, your “Hide decorations” choice for holiday ornaments. It stays on your device and is never sent to us. Nothing else is stored.
- Sign-in cookie: Signing in to VIP pages goes through Cloudflare Access, which sets a single session cookie (
CF_AppSession) so you stay signed in. It is needed for sign-in and is not used for tracking or advertising. Public pages do not set it. - Ko-fi: The Ko-fi link takes you to a different site with its own privacy practices. Nothing loads from Ko-fi until you click it.
Because the site sets no tracking cookies, there is no cookie banner. If this changes, this section will change first.
Use of the site: By using this site you agree to use it lawfully and at your own risk, as described on this page. Content may change or be removed at any time without notice.
AI Wildlife Identification & Field Notes
Automated species identification, critter counts, and synthesized field journals (such as The Dispatch) are produced by local computer vision and machine learning models without manual zoologist vetting. Models can misclassify species, confuse juvenile birds with adults, or invent playful narrative interpretations of animal behavior. Critter Crew Observatory is an amateur backyard natural history observation project, not an accredited biological survey.
Wildlife Nutrition & Safety Advisory
Animals appearing on stream are wild and free-roaming. The observatory provides supplemental, species-safe nutrition (such as raw unsalted peanuts, black oil sunflower seeds, and clean filtered water) in a strictly monitored private backyard setting. Viewers should never attempt to approach, feed, or domesticate wild mammals or birds in their own neighborhoods without guidance from certified local wildlife rehabilitation authorities.
Seasonal Themes & Holiday Dress Disclaimer
The observatory dynamically dresses for seasonal occasions (such as Halloween, Día de los Muertos, and winter holidays) with themed color palettes and visual ornaments. Please note:
- Sensory & Motion Controls: Holiday ornaments (such as animated bats, cobwebs, and festive styling) are non-essential decorative visual enhancements. Visitors with motion sensitivities or contrast preferences can turn them off at any time using the “Hide decorations” toggle located in the site footer (persisted across visits via browser storage).
- Wildlife Adheres to Nature, Not Calendars: While our AI field notes and Dispatch stories may adopt whimsical seasonal references (e.g. nocturnal “trick-or-treaters” or “pumpkin patrols”), all featured critters are entirely wild. Animals are never dressed in costumes, staged, or fed human holiday treats or confectionery.
Critter Union & Feeder Liability Notice
Observatory management accepts zero legal, financial, or moral liability for spilled peanut bowls, midnight patio scuffles, aggressive blue jay posturing, or acrobatic squirrel feeder raids. If you are an opossum seeking restitution for sunflower seeds pilfered by a raccoon at 3:15 AM, please direct your formal hiss to NodeDispatch with audio corroboration.
Backyard Animal Alibi Inquiries
Did an unidentified four-legged suspect overturn your trash bin, dig up your flowerbed, or raid your porch at 2:14 AM? Before accusing the neighborhood dogs, consult our Nightly Activity Log or contact NodeDispatch—there is a remarkably high probability our motion-sensor grid has the raccoon suspect on camera at that exact minute.