Tag-Teaming Crows!!!!

After the few days of the “squirrels-only” project, I wanted to try and attract the crows again. I’ve been getting little pecks of interest here and there with the crows since the big events last week, but nothing really serious - there’s a piece of bread on the ground, a black beak comes in from the side and *yoink* - it’s gone. That’s about all I’ve seen of the crows in the last few days - but at least they’re still there.

So on Monday, I asked around and found (well, my mother found it eventually, actually :)) a page on feeding crows. They suggested apples, cheese and bread, while I suggested many times “this will never work!!” Cut up a small bit of apple, a few small pieces of a white american cheese slice, and left the bread in the bag that’s been in there since I put it out for the squirrels… it was now ready for it’s adoring crow public. Of course, just like I thought - it didn’t work. A few squirrels came here and there, and I had a Black Vulture that flew over the house but didn’t land (wouldn’t that be cool to see on cam!!!!) but no crows… Tuesday came, one crow grabbed a small piece of bread that was laying on the ground again, and that was it… but still, at least they’re still coming back!

But then… on Wednesday, things changed for the better!… (→ continue on with March 14, 2007 - Tag-Teaming Crows!!!!!)

 

 Tag-Teaming Crows!!!!, 3-14-07 [4:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

After a few days with little-to-no success with the crow-oriented Backyard Bag Feeder Project design with the crows, I figured I’d make new squirrels-only Feeder mat with peanuts instead of bread. I cut a new piece of foam, made a few hidden compartments (and a few somewhat obvious compartments), put a little bread in the side (you know, just in case a crow would decide to check things out) and filled all of the other compartments with peanuts. Since I’ve done this project time and time again with the squirrels, I really didn’t think I was going to have a problem getting them to come around…

Well, last year about this time, I had a similar project going for weeks until I got even one squirrel interested enough to come into the frame of the shot (I had the cameras set up as minimalistically as possible so the movement wouldn’t disturb them, so I couldn’t move the shot), let alone tear into the Feeder to get the nuts out. The main reason for the lack of squirrels last year was mainly the nest that was… let’s just say “taken down” (”torn down” would be more like it) by order of the local code enforcer. Yeah, that’s a wonderful thing to find out once you’ve finally saved up enough money to get a lens long enough to watch the squirrel’s nest, isn’t it…?

That was last year though -

this year, the yard is filled with squirrels’ nests, so that means it’s filled with squirrels! (I can’t help but think the November-December vertical feeder project helped with that a little :)), …sooo no problem getting squirrels to come this time! - Although it took a little longer for them to come around, they came, they sniffed and they ripped into the Feeder mat - the first one into the Feeder was interesting to watch, because it just stood there, kind of half-interested… and then it tore into it! And now that I have the mic feeding in from the outside (it’s actually sitting inside the mat!), I have awesome sounds of the squirrels near, on and ripping in to the bag!

 

 For Squirrel Eyes Only!, 3-12-07 [5:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Apparently my Backyard Bag “Pillow-Feeder”-esque Feeder Project is becoming so popular with the squirrels in the area, that they’re beginning to quabble over it… I caught at least 4 pairs of squirrels doing a dominance challenge, complete with (very good) natural sounds of them whining at each other! Very interesting stuff in my opinion!

It’s mine!!
Video follows below…

I took everything in last night because it was supposed to snow today… the sun streaming in through the window seemingly mocks me…

Picture and video in this post © Zach Glenwright

 

 Squirrels with Something to Say! [1:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

It’s been yet another few rainy (or at least impending-rain-ish) days, and now everything’s normalized weather-wise. Out goes everything back up at my Pillow-Feeder-esque version of the Backyard Bag Feeder Project to do some more vertical project tests… but I made the challenge a little easier this time. A little while back, I remember Chris saying something to the tune of “I could have made it harder, but I have it set up so that there’s something to watch when people check in.” Well, I figured the same thing would be better, so I lowered the entire feeder to only 1″ off of the ground. I’ve been getting tired of waiting an entire day for one squirrel to check it out and go “err… nah!”, so I figured I’d give this a go - the squirrels still have the climbing challenge, and that’s one of the main things I wanted to get shots of, so I just set it all up and let the day take form.

I thought I told you to turn that camera off!!

Well, I only got one squirrel today also, but this one squirrel was determined to get the nuts out of the Feeder - all kinds of interesting squirrel activity followed! Running back and forth, jumping on the top and hanging from there, climbing on it sideways, sometimes doing all of those in 2 seconds - a lot better than anything I’ve captured in the last week or so (except for Monday and a few shots on Tuesday), and with this new shot, not only does it cut back on glare, but you can see the squirrels come down the tree before going to the feeder - a nice little addition to the ambiance of the shot.

I also tried a little mini-test where I put a nut on the mic and held it on with rubber bands to see if anyone would be interested in that nut - no one really did any work to get the nut off there, but I did see the one squirrel sniffing at it once or twice. Maybe they’ll notice that more tomorrow?

Time will tell…

Picture and video in this post © Zach Glenwright

 

 Backyard Bag Feeder Project 12-2-06 [6:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Yet more vertical squirrely-ness from yesterday’s Backyard Bag Feeder Project’s version of the vertical Pillow Feeder-esque feeder! They seem to like the seeds almost more then the peanuts… hmm…, what does that tell me…?

Gimme!!

Well, it’s come to the point in the week where the squirrels are interested… what does that mean? It’s scheduled to rain again! Tomorrow, Thursday and Friday — don’t you just love it when it works out like that…?? I’m going to try a much larger version of this large version of the vertical feeder that’s going to be my “Mark 3″ as it were for Backyard Bag Feeders… More on that as it develops… and it stops raining… and I can finally put my cords and equipment out… and the squirrels re-re-re-re-acclimate to it… and… and… and…… eh, it’ll be a little while…

 

 Backyard Bag Feeder Project 11-28-06 [8:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

I moved the entire Backyard Bag Feeder up the clothespole a little to see if the squirrels would acclimate to the new height - well, they didn’t seem to have any problems this time! You can see all of their attempts at besting the higher project in the video below…

Beta Tester
(thanks again to Chris Osborne for the caption…)

This feed was recorded on November 22, right before a huge rainstorm hit — it rained all night Wednesday, then all day on Thursday, so I didn’t have a chance to set anything major out on Thursday… I do have the Feeder Project out today (the 24th) though! I’ve done the following things to make it a little different…

• Change the shot - the shot’s now on a tripod, instead of the ground-level shot - having the feeder elevated kind of screwed the shot I’d get on the ground anyway, and with this setup, the exposure is a lot better!
• Change the project - on Wednesday, I had the Feeder project tied to the pole with wireties. Now it’s hanging from a wire and lightly secured on the bottom to the pole - this will be interesting to see if they’ll figure this version out (probably…)
• Add a mic - I added my shotgun mic to the pole, so that even though the camera is moved away from the shot, the sound won’t be compromised…

 

 Backyard Bag Feeder Project 11-22-06 [5:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Due to the bag falling over on the 20th towards the end, I wanted to make a more sturdy design, so I tied the chain I was using to hang the bag up to the pole down with a wiretie and put a large rock in front of the bag to keep them from pulling it down (which did cut the challenge back a little but not too much!) One more day, I left everything sit outside, and true to the 20th’s project, nothing happened during the day… no interested squirrels, no squirrels even in the area… nothing. But fortunately for me, and also similarly to the 20th’s project, the cavalcade of squirrels came around at about 4pm — they’re still interested, and they’ll stop at nothing to get the nuts out of the bag, even if it means climbing down from the top of it! A few squirrels (it may have been the same one more than once) climbed up to the top of the mat to get the nuts out of the top of it! As you can see, they’re getting more acrobatic, they’re more interested in it (one of them even scent marks it, at about 1:50 in, making it theirs) and they’re more into the challenge of the hanging feeder idea! Next time… the entire setup will be about an inch higher off of the ground… but rain’s coming, and that severely limits the length that I can keep cameras outside, $10 camera or not!

 

 BBFP 11-21-06 Aerial squirrels!, 450Kbps Version [6:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

I left the Feeder mat and the camera out overnight on the 19th to see if anything else would chance the project during the day… and nothing did… but that all changed in the middle of the day! At around 3:30pm, the squirrels started to come — and this time, they were determined to get the nuts out of the bag! One of the more interesting shots of the day (there were many good shots!!) was the squirrel literally digging into the bag with it’s back claws to prop itself up to get a nut out of the top of the bag - one of the things I wanted to see if they would do on my vertical design (they’ve done it on Chris’s version of my project many times, even when it’s dangling in mid-air!) and they did! Very, very, very cool to see them working to get the nuts that way! I didn’t think to try the vertical design before Chris tried it, because I didn’t think the squirrels would be interested — even after I started to try it I didn’t think I would get anyone interested here, but the squirrels are proving me wrong, to the point of making the entire bag fall to the ground towards the end of the video! With the bag being on the ground though, it was a little too high compared to the camera’s height, so you don’t see as much of the squirrels working, but you can still see them!

 

 BBFP 11-20-06 Squirrels!, 450Kbps Version [7:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Chris wrote yesterday:

“Mind you it didn’t quite take the challenge of the bag and ran back up its tree, but it’s a hopeful sign. It looked thinner than my squirrels here, I wonder why“

Weeell…

Fat Squirrel!, about an hour after the video from yesterday’s live capture…

Well, in the upcoming 2 hours after the clip from my live feed was recorded (thanks again!), both of those facts would be debunked! About 20 minutes after Chris watched the video, a curious squirrel got one of the nuts out of the bag! A few squirrels actually came and rose to the challenge, you can see that in the video below!

An interested squirrel!
This squirrel isn’t the same as the one that got the nut out of the bag in the video, but maybe it will be tonight!

I’m going to keep the live feed rolling again tonight - the best time to watch is probably going to be around 1:30-4pm EST - that’s when the squirrels finish their foraging. I also had a few sparrows come by and an occasional Mourning dove, so hopefully if/when anyone checks in, there’ll be something to see!

 

 BBFP 11-19-06, 450Kbps Version [3:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

I’m not sure if anyone visiting here is interested or not in my up-shot stuff, but just in case, I’m posting it anyway…

I left the camera running from Thursday to Saturday, and nothing much happened… until Saturday morning. I finally got an up-shot angle on tape of something that was interested in my hanging bag feeder - a waxwing! This year is a first for them here - I’ve seen them once or twice before on the ground version of my Backyard Bag Feeder Project, but very infrequently… Very cool! You can see all of the waxwing visits in the first video below, along with a few shots of squirrels yawning (especially the first shot of the video)…

A waxwing getting a nut from the bag feeder!

As I was getting ready to shut everything down (it’s supposed to rain here again…), I looked out of the window and saw the bag was tilted sideways on the tree - “I didn’t put it that way!” - and there was a squirrel, finally curious enough about the feeder to take a nut (a few, actually) out of the hanging version! I also got some video Sunday morning (I recorded it from a window in the rain) of another squirrel getting some nuts out of the feeder, but I don’t have that video edited yet and quite honestly don’t really feel like working with it now… It took Chris’s squirrels a week to figure out the initial version of his Pillow Feeder, and it’s taken my squirrels a week to figure out this version of my Feeder project… The 2nd video at the bottom is a few shots of the squirrel getting some nuts out of the bag.

My first hanging squirrel getting a nut!

I wonder if they’ll stay interested… I noticed about an hour ago as I was setting things up again that the squirrel feeder that the bag feeder was hanging on is extremely loose from it’s base, so I moved the feeder bag back over to the birdfeeder area. I wonder if they’ll be as interested in the new place - it’s now hanging where the food is more visable, my camera’s sitting on the ground (completely covered up - it’s supposed to rain again, but I’m taking a chance) and I have nuts sticking out from the bag to see if they’ll venture over that way.

 

 BBFP 11-11-06 Upshot, Birds, 450Kbps Version [4:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 BBFP 11-11-06 Upshot, Squirrels, 450Kbps Version [3:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

In a reply to Chris’s original “Hefty bags are best” post…

“Yes, four out of five squirrels say they prefer Hefty bags to other, smaller makes!“

Based on additional independant usage surveys among bag-conscious woodland creatures, two out of three raccoons agree!…

…but given the same product test in similar usability surveys among birds, the avian consumers, such as grackles, bluejays and crows depend on and defend their Ziploc™ brand bags with ferocity…

All pictures in this post © Zach Glenwright.

Ziploc™ is copyright SC Johnson Corporation and Hefty™ is copyright Pactiv Corporation… just to be safe!…

Thanks to Chris Osborne of The Backyard Voyeur trying his own version of my project, I took a tip from his version - the elevated project. I’ve never really considered doing a Backyard Bag Feeder mat hanging in the air, but he tried it and it worked for him, so I figured I’d try my hand at it too! Not only do I now have a verticially hanging feeder instead of the ground-level feeder, I also (because of that setup) now have a up-shot technique with the camera - since the Feeder mat is above ground-level, I can put the camera on an angle and get an elevated shot of the squirrels checking it out! During this test, however, I didn’t get any squirrel activity on the project itself, but I got all kinds of squirrel activity above - including a squirrel scuffle about 5 minutes into the video! If you don’t want to sit through all 5 minutes of the feed to see that, I also included a smaller video of just the fight at the bottom of this post.

 

 BBFP 11-9-06 Upshot, 450Kbps Version [7:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 BBFP 11-9-06 Squirrel Scuffle, 450Kbps Version [0:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

My version of the Mark 2, with my unique spin, and me, but only s l i g h t l y…

Well, I made my own version of the Mark 2 Pillow Feeder (basicially combining my original Backyard Bag Feeder design and the Mark 2’s vertical orientation) and have a ground-level camera looking up at it… It’s basicially the same design as Chris’s version of the Mark 2, but my father had an idea and designed a dowel-eyering-hanger method of hanging it up which restricts the whole thing to a total of 180º of motion - good for both the shot and the squirrels! A little sidenote here - he’s designed and built most if not all of my fixtures for my project, the wooden platforms, the overhead shot rail system, ground-level 6″ tripod mounts, etc., etc., just not the bag feeder design and idea themselves - so I wanted to get his unique take on the idea…

Of course, having history as my guide with these radicially new kinds of projects, I really have absolutely no confidence in this working today. I didn’t have peanuts, so I had to use various shelled nuts and seeds… There are construction people that are going to be all over tomorrow, so there’s a whole bunch of distraction there! Let’s see… usually, the squirrels around here seem to nitpick everything for a few weeks until they finally make the jump (in this case, quite literally), it’s coooold around here now (do I ever stop complaining about the weather?), there’s cables and cameras (one for now anyway) looking at it that weren’t there before, and it just took so long to put together, it just has to fail (oh, and I’m a pessimist sometimes too…) Of course, I could be proven wrong! I didn’t record the Cam 4 feeder at all last night (but I did check in once and see a squirrel on the rope), so I’m not sure if this version of the feeder will be even noticed - maybe it needs to be about a foot off of the ground?

We will see… at least it’s right next to the bird feeder, so maybe that’ll help it a little…

Same shot, 6:35am EST, with noticable squirrel in the background!

I’ve been wanting to post this video for a few weeks, but I’ve just now gotten around to capturing and editing it… It’s nothing amazing, but I like the effect of the sun’s rays shining down on the chipmunk and the sparrow and thought it would be nice to post it…

Chipmunk in tall grass - video is below…

 

 Reflections, 10-1-06 [1:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Yep, it’s time for another video posting! I finally had a chance to get some squirrels to come on camera Thursday - a very nice test for the HDV camera… Most of the time, they faced away from the camera, like this:

Ol’ Bulging Eye

It’s in those shots that I notice a few things:
• Squirrel eyes are a lot bulgier than I thought… I knew they were large, but…
• The video really shows the texture on the squirrel’s ears as well - interesting look (especially on the full-size version of the above picture, please excuse the interlacing artifacts - it looked worse de-interlaced)

Of course, that picture isn’t the best shot of the mix, and there’s a lot of cool shots where the squirrels do face the camera, but this picture shows off the ear texture the best…

One other thing I found interesting in the video was in the chipmunk segment in the beginning - there’s a mosquito buzzing around it, trying to suck blood from it, and it (seems to) succeed a few times that I saw - it’s a little hard to see (the mosquito) in the web version, but very clear in the raw version!

 

 BBFP Squirrels, 9-28-06 [2:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Another sunny day yesterday gave me the opportunity to try more HDV shots… My favorite shot?

This one…

What?!

And of course, as I went to tilt up to fix the crop of the shot, the squirrel moved… Ah, well… A short video from some of the best of my test shots is below…

 

 Backyard Feeder Project HDV Test, 9-21-06 [1:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Well, it’s been about… forever… since I posted anything, mainly since I haven’t been able to get anything lately. Whenever it’s fine to shoot video, I’m working… when I have time to shoot video, it’s either raining, I’m busy doing something or, I set cameras out and get nothing…

A few weeks ago, I sold one of my better camcorders and upgraded it to a 1080i HDV camcorder, and I’ve been itchy to try it out on my project. It’s been raining constantly here since I got the camera, which both leaves the animals to shelter from the rain, and I’m not going to put the camera out in the rain, of course…

Last week, I was fortunate to tape a squirrel resting, trying to dry off… There is a QuickTime version (I lost the ability to make .wmv files, as an OS upgrade made me lose the serial # to my WMV encoder) of that file at the bottom of this post, video size greatly reduced for the page, of course…

I finally had a chance to try it yesterday in the sun, with the platform setup that I’ve done in the past. The dynamic of what comes to eat at what times has changed greatly since August, with squirrels not even trying before noontime or so, so I didn’t get any squirrel shots… but I did manage to get a chipmunk eating some peanuts…

Chipmunk stuffing his face…

Today? 60% of rain (and of course, it’s sunny now)… Sometimes you never win…

 

 Chipmunk stuffing his face..., 9-19-06 [0:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 Rain, rain, go away..., 9-15-06 [0:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Well, after what’s seemed like 1000 years to me, the heat has finally died down and the animals are slowly starting to creep their way back into the yard (and back into camera view…) I’ve been putting out a test camera to see what (if anything) would chance it’s way to get some food from the Feeder project, and slowly but surely I’ve been getting things to “take a chance” on camera… Yesterday I set up some controllable cameras to get a better shot of what’s been eating near the project and the neighboorhood crowd did not disappoint - there was “pointer squirrel” (you’ll see it in the beginning of the video), a Grackle or 2 (which is a huge deal for me, as I haven’t had them come to the yard in the last few years) and a very good shot of a squirrel just checking things out…

“Who… me??”

 

 It's about time! - Squirrels and Grackles, 8-15-06 [1:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

My obsession of late with my Backyard Feeder Project is to get shots of squirrels (and birds of course, if they decide to come and steal a nut or 2…) from a smaller-than-them perspective… I call them “up-shots” - shots where you seem to be looking up at them from below instead of from above or straight-on (think Meerkat Manor)… So how have I been trying to get these shots, you ask? I’ve been digging… a lot… Right in the middle of my yard, in plain site, is a hole that’s about 1′deep and getting deeper every day… unsightly, yes (but so is that part of the yard anyway…!) Here is a test shot of that whole endeavor, complete with a squirrel checking out the “weird gray thing” looking at it looks like so far… it’s not quite an “up-shot” yet… but it’s starting to look interesting!

Hey… who’s that??

…and yes, I’m wearing sandals while digging a hole… I’m an idiot…

This was it… the last night of our trip to this house, this absolutely wonderful house with it’s plethora of amazing wildlife I couldn’t even dream of seeing at home… and I was set to do my project again, one last time… But the thing about this night - I was, to say the least… tired. More like exausted. The entire week I haven’t been sleeping well, because I’ve either been seeing people I haven’t seen in years, or I’ve been completely immersed in this project… and when I did sleep, it was in very short amounts of time. Between Saturday night, when I finally gave up on monitoring my project and just let it run (I didn’t get anything then, either, by the way) and when I woke up on Sunday morning was about 3 hours. And the entire day of Sunday was packed with things to do - people to visit, things to do… So that makes 8am or so when I woke up, probably about 5:30 or so when I went to bed, and I need to be up all day. ALL DAY. I can’t rest at all, not one minute - there’s too much to do. So, what do I do in that situation? Attempt to plan. “You see, I have the perfect plan — I’m going to set everything up again…”, I go on, “…and go to sleep. That way, I can still get a shot, and I’ll be rested for tomorrow!” The amount of sleep I had was probably the reasoning for that decision, because tomorrow was the ride back home, the perfect time for sleep - why would I want to be rested for that?

So, the day went by, we saw who were supposed to see, do the things we were supposed to do, hobnob here and there (and I played a somewhat invigorating game of table tennis in the middle), and it was now 9pm. 9pm, after being up for 13 hours, after sleeping for 3, which was after being up for another 13 or more hours… I was going to bed! So I set up the project again, after explaning again to my grandfather why I needed to do it with “the bag” again, at 9:30… and I did it in the new location in the yard. “See! This way if something comes, I can catch it! There’s no way I can miss a shot with the project being here…!” Of course, you know where this is going, probably, but let’s keep going… (→ continue on with June 11, 2006 - “All or nothing”)

 

 BFP 6-11-06 Demo Clip [0:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 BFP 6-11-06 (High Quality 800Kbps Version) [25:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 BFP 6-11-06 (Low Quality 300Kbps Version) [25:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 Missing *Video* Raw Audio Segment 1 [5:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 Missing *Video* Raw Audio Segment 2 [9:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup