Author: dougie

Colin and Clarissa

For the avoidance of doubt, all cock pheasants are called Colin, and all female pheasants are called Clarissa. It’s just the way things are.

Lost more birdsong, and the appearance of a mirror that is destined for a Tip Run. In the meantime, Colin has issues. I won’t deny it, I feel a bit bad about that. But it’s outweighed by the amusement factor.

And there’s a new cat. An unknown unknown. There’s our three, then a few locals we recognise … and a new floof.

There’s a hoolit loose, aboot this hoose

We often hear them, but rarely see them. Apart from this footage from the trailcam from the recent snowy weather. I find it slightly alarming to look at, but knowing the owl is where the water is, (or an unfortunate rodent looking for same water), I’m assuming everything is ok.

Redwings in the snow

It was in March 2018 when I saw my first redwing. The Beast from the East brought a blast of snow to Durham and suddenly there were strange birds in the garden. We had fieldfares too, and peering at the photos I realise I struggle to distinguish a fieldfare from a redwing from a song thrush. But I’m pretty sure they were all at the party.

  • Redwing
  • Song Thrush
  • Fieldfare
I wonder if I’ve got those right.

And now three years on I have a trailcam and I’m browsing through the video clips. It’s snowing again, and the redwings are back again. And blackbirds. Lots and lots and lots of blackbirds. And a hoolit. Out of nowhere, in the middle of the night. Everyone needs a drink of water it seems.

Low Burnhall Maprun Score event fly-by

On Thursday it was sunny but still with fresh snow on the ground. It seemed like a good day to have a play with the action camera on the Low Burnhall Maprun Score event. It was lovely. The snow is gone now but this is how it looked (compressed into about 25 minutes). Details are available (for the time being) in the Northern Navigators website.

Best bicycle mountpoint for action camera

Lockdown, maturing technologies and dropping prices have nudged me into an unexpected new diversion: filming bike routes. I’ve always found virtual trainers and on-line cycling simulators vaguely interesting. But not that interesting. I was into Zwift for a long time, then one morning I woke up and discovered I wasn’t.

Nowadays for the time being Rouvy is my virtual cycling world. It suits me fine. Rouvy is real life video and real life routes, some user submitted and the quality can be variable. Having said that, there is a certain quirky charm in some of the amateur videos that is missing from the professionally shot official routes. I fancied giving it a go for my tri club‘s local routes. With cameras coming down in price, it was worth a punt.

There’s loads of good information out there on how to film from your bike, but I couldn’t find much on the best way to attach the camera to your frame. I’ve tried filming from under the handlebars on a quadlock mount, and that works ok but the bike movement is noticeable, especially out the saddle.

So I decided to try an experiment. I chose to film a 5km out and back run along the Broom Park railway lines just outside Durham. Rouvy allows you to create run routes too and I thought this might make a good test (even though I don’t have a treadmill).

I have two Apeman action cameras, an A77 and an A100. The A77 was an impulse buy and is a bit cranky. I lost the battery cover while trying it out in the Tweed Valley Tunnel run in 2019 and haven’t done much with it since. The battery cover loss isn’t actually such a big deal after all since a bit of old cut-to-fit credit card does a surprisingly decent job.

I’ve just bought the A100 as it was cheap, and has image stabilisation. So here was my setup:

A77 on handlebars and A100 on headtube

The A77 (top) is easy to fit on the quadlock mount. Fastening a camera to the headtube of a modern frame on a gravel bike with a chunky headtube was far trickier than I expected. The diameter of the headtube is close to 60mm and most brackets or clamps are not designed for this size. I wasn’t averse to putting the big chunky clamp for my DSLR on the headtube but it was just beyond its limits and didn’t really work. So in the end I chose the universal solution: A couple of plastic cable ties and a basic bolt. Seems ok.

Results were mixed. Exasperatingly, the A100 was tilted slightly upwards, and gave a nausea-inducing view of the just-above the path. The A77 view was much cleaner. The difference was less conclusive than I thought; I was expecting the headtube mounted camera to be much more stable, but in reality I’m finding it difficult to be objective about how much difference there really is. The A100 is a fraction of the price of a GoPro so I expect some differences, although the basic spec (4K and image stabilisation) is what I’m really interested in.

The main question I have about the A100 at the moment is what FOV to choose: Narrow, Medium or Wide. What’s best for a Rouvy film? I suspect Wide but I need to do a few tests to compare the differences. Annoyingly, the A100 seems to forget changes to its defaults between power cycles so everytime I switch it on, I have to change the FOV to whatever I want. I don’t know if the default setting can be changed.

The video below shows my handlebar/headset comparison. I have to say I’m pretty disappointed. The uptilt on the A100 makes the comparison very difficult. The video has about 4 or 5 clips of the same section of railway path. The brake leavers on the A100 are a frequent intrusion, and I’m going to scratch my head on getting the camera further out front. Attaching a broom handle to the top tube (cable-ties!) was one thought. Always interested in others.

The Saris M2 trainer – 6 months later

Six months down the line and my slightly scary Saris M2 seems to have settled down. A query on my August 2020 post where I noted the spectacular demise of my tacx trainer tyre prompted me to have a quick recap.

I replaced my tacx trainer tyre with a Zaffiro pro trainer tyre and have now done about 800km on it.

Vittoria Zaffiro pro trainer tyre

I did another ‘turn test’ – something I hadn’t done for a while. It now takes 4 or 5 full turns to get to the click, compared to the 6 to 8 back in July 2020.

The only other observation I might make is the importance of tyre pressure. I usually have the tyre at 110-120 psi, and any underinflation tends to noticeably increased noise. Wear seems very slightly off-centre on mine but it seems to be of no consequence.

Vittoria trainer tyre on Saris M2

Business as usual on the trailcam

19 Nov 2020 to 01 Dec 2020

A new spot for the trailcam. I decided to see how much it would see on the bird feeders. It took a few attempts as it’s quite hard to find a decent mount point, that’s stable and doesn’t blow around in the wind. It’s been an interesting diversion but on the whole not as interesting as I thought. Focus is problematic as the camera often wants to focus on the distance as the birds are two small. Squirrels seem ok!

Another complication was noticeable if the camera was tilted up a little. I think condensation or water is more likely to cover the lens when it’s angled upwards and this messes up the picture quality.

That aside, not a lot of surprises. Nice if you like squirrels. Grey ones. The occasional magpie, woodpecker and sometimes a nice flurry of tree sparrows. But on the whole no drama.