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

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

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!