Sun 29 Oct 2006
I spent quite a lot of time this afternoon monitoring the live feed from the bag feeder, as I’d tried setting it up vertically just for a change. After quite a while I had a few clips of squirrels inspecting the new arrangement but not really taking much interest, and a few clips of a squirrel digging some of the remains of the woodpecker feed out of the bottom corners of the bag. But nothing had gone for the main attraction, the handful of unshelled peanuts just sitting there asking to be eaten.
Eventually one squirrel did figure out that the top of the bag was now open, and got in there and got one peanut. Then another squirrel chewed through and again, took just the one peanut (see Clip One below). But after that, nothing. I watched for ages and finally got fed up and decided to take a quick shower.
When I came back a few minutes later, the front of the bag had been chewed open and almost every nut had gone! Boy, was I frustrated. How do they know when you stop looking? I obviously missed all the action in that few minutes in the shower. Oh well, when I calmed down and stopped throwing things I decided that I’ll try again, maybe tomorrow, with a fresh bag. Anyway it goes to show that vertical or horizontal makes no great difference to the squirrels, which is what I wanted to find out.
But it wasn’t a good day for the cams anyway. My next clip was captured at the pumpkin feeder and I forgot that I’d set the capture for one frame per second so I ended up with an unintentional timelapse clip instead of proper live motion (see Clip Two below).
Eventually I did get a fairly good clip from the pumpkin feeder; in Clip Three you’ll see one squirrel being ousted by another, who, as it turns out, isn’t interested in the pumpkin anyway. I wonder if this is just a senior squirrel pulling rank for the sake of it, and if so, how seniority is decided?
This post and the videos 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…
Clip One [0:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup Clip Two [0:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup Clip Three [2:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup
October 30th, 2006 at 1:15 am
Hehe… that’s the story of my life with missed shots… In fact, the same thing happened to me on a day I tried the project without the platform in the ground (basicially the same “bag feeder”, but without any support, period)… I left the camera in one position, looking over the project and waiting… I waited and waited, but after 30 minutes, nothing happened, so I took a shower. I came back and the mat was completely out of the shot!
I love the shot in Clip 3 where the squirrel looks towards the camera - as I’m not someone against anthropromorphism, it looks like a soap opera scene, especially with the squirrel in the back looking towards the camera - the one in the front looks like “it can’t know my secret!” Ah, I need to get out more…
I’ve seen squirrels squabble like that before too, but I’m not sure if it’s a pecking order thing or not — it might be the older sibling (or parent) of the other squirrel… or they might just be bullies…
As for the bag feeder, the whole vertical approach is quite honestly something I’ve never tried before! I’ve tried sticking the whole thing in water before (without the wooden part), and doing the whole thing with out any platform support at all (in that case, you need to have a controllable pan/tilt/zoom camera setup!) I wish I knew about the change to the vertical test earlier on Sunday though so I could have recorded it…
I’m off tomorrow, so maybe I can check in a little more often in between doing other things (I do have somewhat of a life, you know… :)) I never really thought about it before, but the whole vertical (or at least diagonal) bag feeder approach makes more sense to get the “up-shots” I was trying to do in July. If you have a camera looking from the back of the project towards the front, and a squirrel looks over the side of the mat, that’s a perfect upshot — and all without digging a hole in the yard (that still, you know, exists and looks kind of, well…)