Category: Garden
Nothing Creepy About This …
First attempts with trailcam
I do a lot of tinkering with webcams and raspberry pi’s. This works after a fashion but I decided to finally invest in a proper trail camera. The difference in quality is significant.
The camera I’ve bought is a Browning Recon Force Advantage from Nature Spy, and so far it’s looking promising. I’ve still got a bit to learn though. My main surprise is how much ambient light is needed before the camera stops using Infrared. The following video was, according to the timestamp, taken at 11:21AM today, and all the preceding videos are in infra red.
Admittedly it’s a wet, dreich day, and natural daylight hasn’t been in abundance anyway. Plus, the camera is strapped to the trunk of a Leylandii tree and I’m wondering whether the branches are casting shade over the camera’s sensor, despite the main capture area being relatively open.
After 11:21 the camera flips to daylight and suddenly there is colour.
No real surprises in the captures. Grey squirrels, magpies and crows. And it’s given me some ideas about the capture area. I think I’ll put it on that Katsura tree tonight (the one with the dangling yellow cable) and point it to the big tree stump.
Scampering Squirrel
If I was a squirrel, and I could climb trees like that, I’d be quite excited too.
Bedtime for the Long-tailed tit
This felt rather special. Out for an evening meander around the garden in the muggy dusk warmth. Then a familiar churring. Very close. Surely not. Surely I’ve not got a Long-tailed tit roost. That would be brill.
A hedgehog and a cat and too much electric light
a walk around the garden
Evening Walk around the garden
Mr Mittens, Willow, a hedgehog, but mostly just gorgeous birdsong.
a walk around the garden
This blog gets its name from the Katsura tree. One of my favourite trees. Walking around the garden this evening the sunlight catches the delicate leaves fluttering in the breeze, but no burnt toffee.
Bring out your dead
For a few days I had a motion-sensitive webcam on the blue tit nestbox. It was a neat set-up but the usual problems of false-postives were too much of a headache to solve. Apart from dappled sunlight shadows being sensed as motion the tree itself would sway gently in the wind, as can be seen in the video clip below.
While fast-forwarding through chunks of nothing-happeningness I stumbled across this rather grim segment. I’m assuming that it’s a parent bird clearing out a dead chick. One of its own. It did occur to me it might be predation by another adult blue-tit but I’m not sure if Blue Tits do that.
Here’s a still taken at the time the adult takes out the dead chick. That was Saturday (three days ago). I’ve not noticed much, if any activity since then so perhaps it’s a failed nest.
