The morning of the 28th was set up exactly like the morning of the 27th - everything was left outside, as to not disturb anything that might scare the squirrels (or anything else) away, the cameras were left out, everything was the same… except this time, I had the panheads set up! Now if the squirrels tried to do what they did on the morning of the 27th, I could get closer to what they were doing! And they did come! … and they did try the same kind of thing that they did on the 27th! … but …
In my haste of putting everything out for the 2nd project of the 27th, I didn’t think of the slack on the wires going to the whole setup - what does that mean, you ask? If I move the panhead slightly, the wires going to the camera bounce back and forth, making the whole setup look like a big giant animal (I think like a squirrel, or bird, or raccoon, what have you, when I set stuff up, because I can usually guarantee that if I don’t find it secure looking, they won’t either) and they’d be scared off… and that’s mainly what happened… (→ continue on with August 28, 2004 - Just like yesterday… but better!)
BFP 8-28-04 (Demo) [0:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup BFP 8-28-04 (High Quality 800Kbps Version) [8:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup BFP 8-28-04 (Low Quality 300Kbps Version) [8:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup
Well, after the interesting taping at the beginning of the 27th, I was in a complete rush to put together another project to see if it would go the same way - I ran outside, grabbed the foam and the platform, quickly made another platform (in what seemed like record time), and threw everything back outside - in the middle of all of this, my alarm went off (”No time to turn it off now!” I yelled as I continued to fotz with the cameras) I grabbed the camera that was the ground shot, threw it onto a panhead as quickly as I could, beep-beep-beep-beep-beep…, grabbed my good camera, threw it on a panhead, wired everything together (of course, almost tripping a few times) beep-beep-beep… the alarm was un-relenting. Then I checked everything - “the shot would be better if I could get the good camera over here, so…!” I grabbed both of the cameras, furiously disconnecting all of the cables, threw them back together in the opposite positions from where they were, made sure everything was working, then ran inside and finally turned the #$@% alarm off. 
August 26, 2004 started out like a normal day, this time as a “scouting” taping, to see if something would still be interested enough to qualify the use of the panhead setup… And I saw the same kind of behavior I’ve seen many times before with the squirrels - they get the food off of the top of the project (which I of course forgot to tape), then they dug at the platform to get the nuts inside. Well, I got lazy during the night of the 26th and I left everything outside and running in case anything wanted to come in the morning. When I woke up the next day, I saw something that I couldn’t believe - the squirrels (I think it’s just one, but it could have been more) found some food at the bottom of the bag and tore the foam right out of the mat platform! I ran to check on the video I taped during the whole thing to see if I caught it, and there it was, the squirrel literally tearing the foam right out of the bag! Amazed that the squirrels would actually try that hard to get a small piece of food, I tried it again the next day, with a disasterous setup and interesting results… (read the 27th’s entry for the continuation…)
2004 was the year for technical innovations at Backyard Bag Feeder Project headquarters. For years, I’ve been working with the same setup- A camera, maybe 2, feeding into the house and recording there - one thing that used to drive me insane was that one shot that I could gotten if I could just have moved the camera up a little… “Wow! That grackle shot would have made for a really good profile shot… but the head was cut off by the angle I had set up… too bad…” Well, that all changed in August ‘04 when I discovered the wonder of the motorized pan head… I knew of so called “pan/tilt/zoom” cameras, but they were usually priced at $800 or above, and the quality was on-par with an old handycam - if you already have a decent camera, it doesn’t make any sense to get a whole new lesser-quality camera just to be able to move it around. Then I found my solution: if I use a LANC controller on the camera (which lets me control the zoom and the focus settings), and a motorized pan head and it’s controls to move the camera around, the whole setup should work in the same way as a PTZ camera - and I could get broadcast-quality shots with the camera I already used. So I ordered a Bescor MP-101 panhead and a 50 foot LANC extender cable to use with a LANC controller I already had - this was mainly as a test, as I wanted to see how the whole setup would work in a project-like situation, without going all-out on getting equipment. Well, a week went by and I finally tested the setup outside in a controlled experiment with a fake project, just to see how the whole setup functioned. That test passed with flying colors - no actual shots to speak of, but I could move the camera all over and control focus/zoom and movement of the shot!