Tue 15 Aug 2006
August 15, 2006 - It’s about time!
Posted by Zach Glenwright under Backyard Bag Feeder Project, Birds, Edited Feeds (SD), Grackles, Squirrels2 Comments
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]: 
Getting once again tired of my standard method of setting up shots, I tried my “aerial shot” technique that I tried once before in June… again. And about as moronicly set up as it was in June (remember how I had it taped to the window?), with this setup, I had the $10 camera taped (yes, taped) to the end of a kind of sturdy tripod, which was then suspended by a clothesline. Instant aerial shot. The things I do to get different shots… and of course, when you have a shot like that, it’s an absolute pain to set up! If you just move it a little, it screws the centering of the shot up, so you have to move the back of the tripod, which moves the camera off center, then move the camera, which then moves the tripod back to where it was, then move the tripod again, which… lets just say it took about 20 minutes to finally center the shot when it was set up… and even then, if it just moved a -little- bit, the shot wouldn’t work - so this was an absolute joy to work with, but the shots themselves were somewhat interesting… and when I finally got enough brains to put a panhead on the setup (yes, with even more tape on that), I could center the shot up much easier and get closeups of the tops of squirrels - another interesting perspective… Of course, this whole “aerial” idea followed me into the 2006 season, but as you will see when I put shots from that year up, I have a much smarter way to do it then…
Sometime in mid-June, I got another camera from eBay for the purpose of using for far, far-away shots, a Canon L2 - originally made in 1994 or so. One advantage to using that camera is that you can get a special extender that lets you use long lenses, so you can get shots from extremely far away, but of course, there’s a catch… and that’s one part caviat emptor on my part, as I found that it does have the ability to use LANC… but it’s limited to zooming ONLY - no focusing control! … That’s one of the major advantages to using LANC in the first place, so that you can keep changing the shot to different parts of the yard if you need to — well, that’s a moot point with this camera, but as a camera itself, it’s not that bad! It does do very well with long-range shots with the lens that came with it (I haven’t gotten the extender, so I’m relying on the lens that came with it) and that means I can sit the camera half-way across the yard from where I’m shooting and still get a somewhat decent shot… as I did with this day. One other strange quirk with the L2 is that it does have the ability to use plug-in mics, and it does have the ability to manually adjust the level of the mics you plug in to it, but it doesn’t even pass the sound through to the outputs unless you’re recording in the camera! If you’re not rolling in the camera, it just shuts the entire sound section off entirely! Not very useful when you’re using it as a analogue input feed… So, yes, the sound isn’t that good with this edit, as I didn’t have a good camera to plug the shotgun mic into, but the day itself was pretty active!
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?
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… :))
Another shot I did just… because… I had a little time after my typical setup, so I threw the camera on a tripod with the panhead and just sat it at the bird feeder for about an hour and a half. Just to see what would come, I let it run it’s course. In the time I had the camera running, I had a few squirrels try to get food from the feeder (along with some very good closeup shots of one eating from it), a few nice ground shots (from earlier in the day) and a cardinal even decided to show up! — that’s a rare occurance to get on tape, period, but there it is!
Well, I went back to the old method of using the platform to hold the mat to the ground… and (as you can see in the thumbnail, if you’re looking at the website) the squirrels didn’t mind going back. Because I have the $10 camera now as a backup camera and also have another “cheapo” eBay camera in reserve (this one is an exact duplicate of the camera I used when I started the project - an old CCD-FX330, which sadly enough has a LANC jack, but doesn’t accept a LANC controller for some reason), I decided to test with 3 angles this time — the new 3rd angle is basicially another version of the front angle, but a lot wider (it shows the other tree in the yard, so you can see other squirrels checking out what the squirrel on cam is doing.) The 2 main cameras have panheads and LANC control, and the 3rd additional angle is just there to show a wider version of the whole yard. The cool thing about this day is the squirrels take the piece of foam out of the mat, then the one who pulled it out is confused with what to do with it… “OK, it’s out! … Now what…?!”
With the success of the other 2 platform-less mat tests, I tried it one last time just… because… This edit is more about getting closeups of the action than following the general wide action of the squirrels, because I wanted some closeups of them working for the food to show in a master edit. I noticed the squirrels were getting a little more frustrated working with this setup, so I figured it’s probably time to go back to the tried-and-true wooden platform method again, but I wanted to try it one more time to see if they were still interested in working with it free-form the way it was… I didn’t get as many squirrels as I usually do - Patches came and got some nuts out, but she ran off after about 3 minutes (maybe because the camera moved?), and the other squirrel that checked it out left after only a little while also, so this seemed like a good reason to go back to the old platform…
Another platform-less mat test! The test on the 19th did so well that I decided to do it again… same deal as before, same basic amount of food (a small bit on the bottom as well, just to see if they’d notice it) and the same panhead setup… this day went on much longer than the 19th though! A squirrel that I dubbed MDS (Mrs. Destructive Squirrel), who was collectively named Patches (because of the interesting patches of fur on it’s back) destroyed the project completely, getting all of the food out, without any problem of it not being bolted down to anything - and that in itself was an interesting thing to see, because she drug it halfway around the yard to get to it! This way of doing the project is a very interesting thing to watch but it’s essential to both use a panhead, and of course, be there as it’s happening! It was a little more annoying sound-wise however, as I can’t move the mic with the project, so as the project gets dragged away from it, the sound from the shotgun mic is a little less reliable.
Well, now… time for something a little different! Since I now have the whole panhead system setup, and can move the cameras to accomidate any actions that may happen in the area, I decided to try my project setup a little minimalisticly… a little lazier… a little old school… without stapling the bag to it’s wooden platform. With this test, the objective of the day is the same, but the mat isn’t held down to anything, so it gives the squirrels a little more to work at if they want to get the nuts inside of the bag… I wasn’t sure if it would work this way, because the squirrels have a habit of knocking the whole platform on top of themselves and getting scared off because of that, but it seemed to, the squirrels seemed to have fun with it, and as a bonus, they seemed to keep the action close to the microphone, so I have all of the sounds of the day as well! But the plot thickens…
Well, I’ve tried it before, but I wanted to see how the squirrels would deal with it this year - I made a feeder mat with peanuts put in recessed holes in the foam. There is food in the bag, but it’s not visable to the squirrel… so how do they deal with it? Well, this time, they didn’t! The squirrel only found the first few nuts that were visable and ignored the other ones stuck in the foam! They sniffed around for awhile (and there are some excellent natural sounds of that on this recording!) but they didn’t find any of the more recessed nuts… Score one for those who want to hide nuts from squirrels (of course, I’ve done this before and they’ve eventually found them, etc., etc… but not this time!)
On the 25th, once again one week from the last taping, I changed my project around a little. I still kept the same shots, but I moved the waterdish to the other side of the mat (the plants are starting to get too large to set everything the way they were before), moved the project itself a little bit forward and started taping in the morning again - the way I work, it would be a lot more convenient to set the whole thing up in the morning instead of the night - then I could try more things during the week than just 2 tapings a week - it kind of kills the whole scientific basis who’s-coming-thing if you can only set shots up once or twice a week. Well, the morning crew didn’t disappoint either, as I guess the dynamic of the best time was starting to change - earlier in the month, morning tapings didn’t really work, and now night tapings aren’t doing as well. A few more nice closeups, lit a little differently in the daytime are here, as well as proof that the morning is now where it’s at as the best time for trying these setups!
One week after the tapings of the 11th and 12th, I tried my project at night again… I was working the entire week before then, so this was the next real chance I had to setup and try to get some shots - and it’s technicially same as the 12th’s taping, same angles and everything, same mic placement, and the project itself is the same… although I did manage to get a few more nice closeups (and the squirrels found a little more of the food that I hid in the mat of course) -
The main reason I included this video in the collection is because of the closeups I got (mainly in the beginning) and the squirrel profile shots… I changed the setup slightly (I moved the $10 camera to a tripod so that the Squirrel Critic couldn’t switch angles on me again…) and I got a shot or 2 of a robin that passed by… This day isn’t one of the most exciting days (nights, actually - I found that the best time for squirrel activity at this specific time of this specific year was night), but it’s still a pretty good day edit, and it shows off another angle for a shot (this time the 2nd angle was looking sideways instead of back towards the project) - it would be nice to do the whole “matrix” thing with my angles, but somehow I doubt that 2 cameras would work for that…