Sun 22 Oct 2006
I picked up on Zach’s backyard feeder idea and put together something similar last week. Mine was, of course, not so carefully thought out nor finely tuned; I got a block of something called Nu-Foam as I couldn’t find any of the normal stuff, and put that in a two and a half gallon zip up bag with a lump of concrete to weigh it down and a couple of piles of peanuts in the top where they could be seen but not accessed without opening the bag or chewing through. Initially I also put some extras on top to encourage the animals to come take a look. Over the first couple of days, the extras vanished but nobody attempted the bag itself.
However, this morning a black squirrel took the initiative and got all of one pile of peanuts out, and got the bag open as well for good measure. So the official result is that it took one week for one squirrel to figure this one out. I didn’t have the project on camera because I didn’t expect there would be anything worth seeing, or at least not often enough to devote a camera to it, and this morning I didn’t have a still camera handy when the squirrel did crack the puzzle but I did see it doing so. As far as I can tell, no birds were interested in tackling this one, even though we’ve picked up a couple of bluejays who are big enough to take it on. There are probably too many other and easier sources of food in this yard for them anyway.
Anyway I will replace the bag and move it somewhere else in the yard, away from the tree, and see if the birds take it on. Unfortunately it’s not a project that suits the live cams so it will be off camera, but I’ll keep a watchful eye on it and report developments.
This post and the pictures from it are © 2006 Chris Osborne, originally published on The Backyard Voyeur. The “Pillow Feeder” is his feeder project based on my (Zach Glenwright’s) Backyard Bag Feeder Project…
October 23rd, 2006 at 3:22 am
Nice!! Awesome! (Do you mind if I put a mention of this on my site? :)) It looks like the black squirrels know how to get into the bag as well as our tree squirrels do! I’ve never used Nu-Foam, although I’ve seen it, but I’ve also done similar projects with foam that looks a lot like it… That would have been a cool thing to see the black squirrel working on the project - although it seems kind of interesting that it took them a week to figure it out!
I love the “Unfortunately it’s not a project that suits the live cams so it will be off camera” line - that’s where I’d be different - one of my rules, even early on during the inception of my project in ‘98 was “if it’s not on camera, it’s as if it didn’t happen!” If you come back from a newly-made bag and find it destroyed hours later without explanation, it makes more sense (to me, anyway) to record the whole thing and sift through to find who tried to get the food out of it (of course, this is coming from someone who sits through 30+ hours of footage to find the 5 minutes the squirrel actually sat there ripping at the bag - I’m just slightly more obsessed with the whole thing…) And of course, I personally could watch that feed all day…
One other thing - we haven’t gotten many birds around here that like to work on the project, but when there are interested birds around, they seem to have specific times of the year that they like to get food out of the bag. Bluejays are here year-round, but actual project activity around here peaked in May this year. Bluejays tried many, many times to get the food out of the bag, sometimes for minutes at a time, making larger and larger holes until they could fit the nut through. Grackles used to go at the whole “get the nut out of the bag” concept furiously, talon and beak, but those periods of time were usually limited to a week (2 tops) during June, and I haven’t seen any grackles take any food out of the bag in at least 2 years (I think the last time was in June ‘04.) I also had a crow visit (and try to take bread out of the bag), but that only lasted a few days, despite my actually trying to entice more crows to the area - so birds are kind of fickle when it comes to the whole “Backyard Feeder Project” idea — maybe Cali. birds are different than ours? I’ve always wanted to see if vultures would be interested, but I doubt that you’d want vultures in your yard!
October 23rd, 2006 at 10:51 am
We’re using different media of course, I am entirely digital and with the kind of inexpensive setup I have here it would be impossible for me to record hours of material and then fast forward through it; there’d be gigabytes of data and no way to speed up the reviewing process. Having said that, if you know a way that I could record and review digital files with the ease that you can do it with analogue material, do tell. And keep the jargon down to idiot-level, please
October 23rd, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Hehe… I’ll try…
My setup’s basicially 99% digital too (I really only run VHS as a last-resort backup - and really dread using it!) - and the DV video files do take up a lot of space… I have some raw files that are 50+GB, and even an hour of edited broadcast-quality material takes up close to 15GB or so… I’m not sure if Windows Media’s encoder lets you do this or not, but some webcam programs (I know QuickTime Broadcaster does) let you record the stream that you’re sending out to the hard drive to either watch it later (or to archive past broadcasts so that people that weren’t there can watch what went on.) That’s one way you could save the stream if you’re running with just a webcam, and I’m not sure, but SimpleCam 2.0 might be able to do that too. Another way (the way I’d probably do it if I was doing a setup similar to yours) would be to use a seperate program and download the stream locally (right off of the computer without needing to go to the net to get it) with a program that can download Windows Media streams, but I’m not going to discuss that here (I’ll write you an e-mail on how to do that if you’re interested in trying that…) Windows Movie Maker, which is a program that comes standard in most newer computers should be able to take a webcam input and record it to an .avi file to watch later, but that would mean losing a webcam source, as I’m pretty sure that the program would tie the drivers up to use as a cam. None of these really fix the “gigabytes of data” problem, but I don’t think that a Windows Media stream would take up that much data… maybe 1GB/hour, which isn’t really that bad, and when the file is done recording, you should be able to go through the file non-linearly (you can choose any time in the file and go right to it instead of having to fast forward through it like a tape) and find out who did what to which bag/feeder/camera/whatever…
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:19 pm
WME does allow a copy of a stream to be output to the drive, though I’ve not tried it myself. The problem there is that out of the three PCs I have running cams, only one of them has enough processor overhead to do this and continue to run the cams as well; the others are already going flat out as it is. But I might well try it as an experiment and then run the output file through windows movie maker, which divides everything up into bite sized clips (and generally it’s a very irritating thing too, but there may be a good use for it here). Trouble is, this project is currently on the wrong PC, which would mean switching cams around and just now I don’t want to do that, it gets awfully messy. But I’ll give the technique a try with one of the others anyway and see how much processing power is needed to do the simultaneous save to disk.
Ideally all that’s needed is a motion-sensitive camera, but to get that feature I’d have to drop windows media again and I don’t really want to do that either.
I must admit that I hadn’t thought of using Windows movie maker as a kind of motion-sensing device but it’s a good idea; theoretically it should split the clip when there’s a significant change of content, though I must say from what I’ve seen so far that it appears to split clips more or less at random.
Another option is to do time lapse, at say 10 frames a minute, to keep the file size down … I’ll try some things out and see what they look like. But if there’s only going to be one squirrel per week interested in this project, it’s still not going to be really worth the time and effort to capture just that one attack.
October 24th, 2006 at 1:44 am
True, true… I’m with you on that one - that’s why I usually shut down my operations in September-October or so for anything related to my project (that, plus I usually divert my attention to gull videos during the fall/winter) - usually that’s the time of year when activity dies down rather than picks up, so you might want to try the whole Backyard Feeder Project thing more intensely in the spring (April-May-ish) rather than now… On day in May this year, for example, I put a *completely* new platform, made from scratch, out in the morning and it was torn to shreds in only an hour and a half from when I put it out by the squirrels! (this is just half of the video.)
But for now, if you feel like it, just try it for a little while longer and let me know how it goes (and how well the whole Windows Movie Maker option works) - maybe (like I said before) California’s squirrels are different this time of year…?
…now if only someone with foxes woulda/coulda try it and see how it works with them…
Of course, h o p e f u l l y by this time next year, I’ll be able to see if foxes are interested - at least I finally had the opportunity to see raccoons try it this year — that’s huge!
October 24th, 2006 at 11:38 am
Update: I refilled the feeder and put it out yesterday. It went untouched all day, but this morning it had been chewed open and all the nuts were gone. It was on a live camera too, but the theft occurred too early to catch me (or anyone else, I imagine). Still it goes to show that at least one squirrel has figured this out pretty quickly.
October 24th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Agh! Which cam was it on? I could have watched it! If it happened in the morning, it most likely happened right after dawn - that seems to be the best time for squirrel activity (or at least it has been for me when I’ve tried shots.)
October 24th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
It’s on camera 8, which unfortunately runs off the slowest of the PCs so no live monitoring directly on the PC is practical (it would probably stop the stream from running, so I haven’t had the courage to try it).
This is the closest I’ve got to catching one in the act, but this one just took a look and left …
October 24th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Ah! Very nice… On the “catching the action” side… if you set it up again for tomorrow morning, I can watch that cam and roll on it at home (that way, you wouldn’t need to record it on your end, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the space problem either), also that way if something happens in the time I’m watching it, I could send you the result, if you wouldn’t mind doing it that way…?
October 24th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
OK - I just looked at Cam 8 and saw the shot there, but I can’t watch right now, because I’m at work, and I doubt that I’m going to get home until at least 3 hours from now, which will be about 8-9pm or so where you are, so that’ll be too late to be able to see it tonight… So if no one else tries anything tonight, hopefully I’ll be able to catch whoever comes tomorrow morning!
October 25th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
I got the action shot this morning!
A squirrel, I’m not sure if it was a black squirrel or a tree squirrel from the cam shot - I’m guessing it was a tree squirrel, but I guess we’ll find out when I post the video tonight… because… I didn’t have enough time to re-edit the action from the morning (it happened 12pm-ish here, so about 9am ish in actuality (more like 8:47am or somewhere around then)) before I went to work though, so I’ll post it tonight… Extremely cool though to watch my idea being successful somewhere else!
I have 2 questions for you though, Chris - 1 - did you use whole peanuts as food in the bag or did you have some that were taken out of the shell? - I can’t really tell from that shot (but they were all whole peanuts from the main shot a few days ago)… I’ve found that using a few peanuts (and other small things, like a small amount of birdseed) that have been already shelled in the bags I’ve made keep the squirrels around to eat longer, where if they have the full peanut in the shell, they just grab it and go off to bury it for later, but you’ve probably noticed this in your other feeders. My other question is, have you been hiding nuts in the foam (or Nu-Foam, or whatever) in the projects that you’ve been building? I’m not sure if it would work as well with Nu-Foam, but with the normal foam, I’ve been making small hiding holes where I’ve been sticking other goodies that the squirrels usually find later… One other interesting thing to see if they notice - (and of course, a good squirrel excercise plan too… :))
October 25th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
I’m really pleased you caught the shot
I used whole peanuts unshelled as a tempter; I have found that the squirrels don’t always take shelled peanuts but they do spot and go for unshelled ones. I get the point about them taking the whole ones off to bury and can try shelled ones but whether they will be as effective a temptation I don’t know.
I haven’t cut holes in the material because it’s not like foam and I am concerned about the squirrels pulling it apart and perhaps eating it. In fact the material is double-bagged with the nuts between the two bags just to be on the safe side.
In any case I leave the refinements to you; this is of course a mere shadow of your accomplishments in the area of weird feeders
By the way, black squirrels are tree squirrels too.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:08 am
Thanks! I’ll check in tomorrow also to see if I can catch it again (if it’s still up - I didn’t check later in the night to see if it was still there.)
Oh yeah… I… er, knew that…
I was thinking the entire time I wrote that “is it Gray squirrel or Tree squirrel… Gray squirrel or tree squirrel…?” That’s what I meant… technicially, Flying squirrels are tree squirrels too then…
As far as the unshelled peanuts go, the way I’ve been doing it is to have 2 or so full-sized peanuts along with an assortment of unshelled peanuts sitting on the top of the platform, as well as the holes I mentioned cut into the foam, which usually have (based on the size of the hole) either shelled, unshelled or a little bit of birdseed or bread (just in case there’s that rare opportunity for a crow to come back again…) The smaller, shelled peanuts seem to attract the birds a little more, as the bluejays and the grackles that I’ve had in the past seem to prefer them to the full peanuts… The unshelled ones are there to attract squirrels, but as soon as they know they can get those peanuts, they see the other ones and know where to get more food… that way, you can get them interested in the big peanuts, then when they come back to check out what other food is available at the buffet, you can get shots of them eating the shelled nuts. If they’re into it enough, and don’t mind the camera moving, you can get really nice closeup shots of them eating that way (if you have a way of controlling the camera’s position.)
Now I know what you’re talking about when you talk about Nu-Foam… it’s kind of like Polyfill or pillow filler material, right? That makes sense that it’s double-bagged like that - it’s a lot more fiberous than foam is - kind of like fiberglass (I thought there was tape on the front of the bag in the shot, but that was the other bag - but that makes sense to have a bag in a bag in that case…) You wouldn’t be able to work with that the same way you can work with foam anyway… I try to make sure the squirrels don’t eat the foam either — I’ve seen squirrels eat a small amount of foam before, but it usually only happens .0001% of the time, and it’s usually isolated to one day throughout the entire year, maybe about 10-20 seconds or so, in the course a year. The other 98.999% of the time they just tear it out of the mat and toss it aside, or they chew it for a second, thinking it’s a nut or something and then immediately toss it out (the other 1%). If I do notice that one of the squirrels starts to do that, I bring the project in and hold off on putting it back out for a week or 2 or so, to remove the temptation and change the various regulars that come back - I’ve never had any problems doing that, and they don’t do that when I bring everything back out - I would hate for something bad to happen that way, so I make sure to watch my tapings as they’re going on (of course, I also have to be there to steer the camera), unless I do a taping when I’m at work, and that usually only happens a few days during the year - I hate to do my project when I can’t be in control of the shot I’m getting or the situation that’s going on.
Hehe… you flatter me… (I think :)) Thanks! (as I look at my boxes full of raw and edited DV tapes from the last 8 years…)