Another brilliant idea from my constantly sleep-deprived mind! “Uh, I can dig a hole and put the camera in there… Maybe it’ll be cool!” Hmm… do you ever have those ideas that seem so good, you play the whole thing out in your head? And then when it comes to that time, you just go “ah, screw it!” Well, that was one of those ideas. But I said “screw it” to the “screw it” anyway and dug the hole. At 4:30 in the morning. And put the camera (on a panhead even) in the hole, pointing up at the mat from below. This is what resulted from that. Once again, not the best work I’ve ever done, but isn’t that closeup cool?
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A little disappointed at the crow leaving, I had a few unsuccessful projects the day after the 11th. I’d sit everything out, take about 2 hours setting everything up and what would happen? Bupkus. Finally on the 21st, I decided that if nothing was coming, I should do something incredibly stupid and suspend a camera from 20ft. above the project to catch things that won’t come! Hey, if I can be stupid, might as well be all out! Well, something did come. Granted, it’s not the most amazing thing I’ve ever shot, but I thought the whole “aerial shot” looked interesting. A little while later, I moved the project to a different part of the yard and tried a much better approach, but here is the first attempt at the above-the-mat shot. Delicately shot from a camera attached weakly to a half-ass broken tripod hanging out of a window duct taped to the wall. Yep, I meant alllll out stupid…
All right! A crow is now interested in my project to come back every day! It’s about time! I can finally make a project for the crows to play with! But it was not to be. This was the last day the crow came to the backyard and to my project. I’m not sure why it stopped coming. Maybe it found a better source of food? Maybe it died? Eh - marital issues? (OK, really doubt it…) But this was it. It was back to squirrels only for the rest of the summer…
Amazed that a crow decided to come to my yard twice, I decided to put all of the cameras back out again. Maybe it would come a 3rd time?? I prepared a project filled with bread (I find they like that the most) and sat it out. Within 6 minutes, a squirrel came and destroyed the whole thing! Interesting, because I didn’t think they liked bread - and they (or at least this one) didn’t! I made another project and sat it out, hoping that the crow would again chance at getting “a piece of it” - and it came back again! 3 days in a row!!! It also came back 3 times that day! A first! I also had the shot from 3 different angles this time (and with much better sound!) And finally, I got a true display of what crows will do to get to the bread inside the project itself! Very interesting watch.
On the 8th, after seeing the crow, I took the main camera in but decided to let the secondary one out in it’s place, just in case it decided to come back — it didn’t. But I kept it out anyway. I didn’t really feel like doing a set-up on the 9th, so I just left everything from the previous day sit there, once again hoping that it might take another chance at it. Sure enough, at 9am that morning, the crow came back, punctual and just as interested. The shot isn’t as nice and the sound sucks, but there it is again, trying once again to get food from the project! It pecked at it a few times and even stood on top of it towards the end!
The night of the 7th I had a huge complaint that there were no grackles this year. Every year since I started the project, I could pretty much count on them being there in June. Cut to the next morning, I was just sitting there watching a squirrel finish eating, around 9am. The camera was zoomed in after watching the squirrel feed, and I zoomed out to get a wider view (in case another squirrel wanted to come back) and what should I see? Yes, that’s right - a crow! I have always wanted to see what a crow would do with the project (and if it would be interested at all, for that matter) and this proved likewise! Of course, it didn’t really do anything to the project itself, but just to see a crow in my backyard is cool enough! (Yes, that’s right, I have no life… :))