All posts by parmacetti

Monday – 1.30.2017

1:55 PM – More kinds of birds than I thought hit the suet feeder. The other day I saw a Carolina Chickadee, then yesterday another. Not as frequent a guest as the woodpeckers and nuthatches, but they put in an appearance every now and then.

4:50 AM – It was a big night for the raccoon. Here he is at the platform feeder on the deck:

Next, he climbs up the tree and gets into the suet feeder:

He figures out how to get the top off the feeder and get into the suet, but the camera only picks up glimpses of that. His next strategy is to slap the feeder around and knock pieces of suet out and onto the ground. He climbs down for a snack, the comes back up to repeat:

Now back up to shake the feeder again:

Finally, he knocks the feeder out of the tree onto the ground. I’m not sure why he ran away instead of eating the rest of the suet, maybe he thought the noise would alert us:

There was still suet left after ‘Rocky’s’ adventure. It’s possible he’d eaten his fill, after 20 minutes at the platform feeder, plus the suet he had for desert. But I think he just got spooked when the feeder fell.

As much as we enjoy watching him, we really don’t want him to visit. We were taking in the platform feeder at night, but since he stopped coming around, we let that slide. It looks like we’re going to have to resume that, plus bring in the suet as well.

Sunday – 1.29.2017

8:10 AM – The Goldfinch is back at the suet feeder. He’s a very enthusiastic eater.

8:00 AM – Another visit from Bruno, the fence jumper, this time in daylight. This is two videos stitched together. In the first part, though you can’t see his face as the suet feeder is in the way, it looks like his owners are calling him. He takes his time responding.

6:40 AM – What bird is this? The back markings start half way down, unlike the sparrows and wrens. It’s closest to a nuthatch, but the color is wrong for the White Breasted variety we have. There’s a sort of brown cap, and some yellow around the throat, but none of this is distinct enough for me to identify him.

6:05 AM – This is the first Sparrow I’ve seen at the suet feeder. He just perched on top of it for a moment, then few away. I think he’d have a hard time eating through the grate with his short beak. The woodpecker next to him never stops eating.

Saturday – 1.28.2017

4:25 PM – It was windy today. The motion detectors on the cameras are sensitive enough to react to tree limbs and bushes moving around, so we got a lot of ‘false positives’ – videos with no birds in them. Actually, there weren’t that many birds around, at least not as many as usual. Here’s a Pine Warbler at the suet feeder:

And here’s a male and female Purple Finch at the platform feeder.

2:55 AM – The new Trail Cam caught ‘Rocky’ coming and going three times. Unfortunately, there’s about a two second delay in the camera starting to record, so we just see a glimpse of him coming up the path. We get a better view as he goes back home. Maybe his den is in the small thicket in the lower corner of the yard. This is more activity than I really expected, and I think we’re not seeing all of it. The last video shows him coming up the hill at 2:46 AM, but not coming down. I’m sure this trail isn’t the only path he uses.

Coming:

Going:

Friday – 1.27.2017

2:10 PM – Much more traffic at the Suet Cam than I expected. A variety of Nuthatch I haven’t seen before, the Brown Headed Nuthatch, is a frequent visitor. Two varieties of woodpecker, what we thought was a Goldfinch (actually a Pine Warbler), and the Carolina Wren. Following are some videos of these visitors.

Here’s the female version of the Downy Woodpecker. It’s slightly smaller, and has no red patch on the back of the neck.

The larger Red-Bellied Woodpecker visited several times. He really attacks the suet, don’t know if he’s really hungry, or that’s just his style.

We thought the Goldfinch didn’t come to the platform feeders at first, but later there were plenty there. This one on the suet feeder is actually a Pine Warbler.

I was a little surprised to see the Carolina Wren here, since he’s at the platform feeder so often. I guess he likes a little variety.

9:25 AM – We rearranged the cameras. Here’s the Trail Cam – no action yet, but it will be interesting to see what come up during the night.

And here’s the first video from our Suet Cam – a male Downy Woodpecker.

6:05 AM – No raccoon last night, but we did have a visit from Bruno, the dog from the house behind us. He’s an habitual fence jumper. The neighbors are constructing a Bruno-proof extension of the fence (increasing it’s height in the places he uses to launch himself). Evidently it’s not completed, or, more likely, not capable of stopping the irrepressible hound. In any case, welcome, Bruno! Pee where ever you want, and watch out for the raccoon.

Thursday – 1.26.2017

2:50 PM – This is the cat that’s been visiting at night. He’s one of several feral cats in the neighborhood.

12:05 AM – This is just a clip of standard platform feeder activity – a Blue Jay having a snack. The chopped nuts are very popular with all the species.

There’s some camera-shake in the video. I noticed it before, but so far haven’t figured out what’s causing it. The mount seems secure. This is one of the problems/changes that we’re going to address in the next few days. We have a camera pointed at the ground near a couple of the feeders on the path, but it doesn’t pick up the bird action – they blend into the leaves and ground cover. That needs to be relocated. The other is aimed at a birdbath that sits too high to pick up any good shots of birds (or squirrels or raccoons). That’s also going to be moved.

Wednesday – 1.25.2017

10:50 AM – The usual overload of Sparrows this morning, with some Chickadees and a few Nuthatches. Here’s video of a Nuthatch in the feeder, joined by a Sparrow. A few moments later the Sparrow gets evicted by a Bluebird. Life goes on in the platform feeder.

1:25 AM – Harlan J. ‘Rocky’ Raccoon was back on the deck and surrounding areas three times last night – at least. Although we took in the deck platform feeder, we left some nuts on the rail. That must have attracted him. In the first video he leaves the deck then stops by the feeder we set up on the path (you can see his shiny eyes). There’s a lot of seeds on the ground, spillage by the birds. He didn’t stay long. In the second, we see a better shot of him, for a few seconds, foraging for more ground seed.

Tuesday – 1.24.2017

2:40 PM – We saw a Goldfinch at the finch feeder. He spent a pretty good long time eating, so I got some pictures. Unfortunately, they’re really bad. I’ll post them below, anyway. Also managed to take a video, which came out better.

Here’s the Downy Woodpecker. I think. It’s possibly a Hairy Woodpecker, but those are supposed to be bigger with longer beaks. Either way, it’s the first time I’ve seen one. The camera battery died just after I started filming.

5:05 AM – These two videos show White Throated Sparrows (our most numerous visitors recently) squabbling for space at the feeder. In the first one a sparrow appears to ‘sucker punch’ another bird, flying in and pecking his head. After looking at it in slow motion, he’s actually swatting him with his wing. In the second, two of them have a kind of sparrow duel, with beaks, for position in the center of the feeder. This kind of thing goes on all the time, of course. I guess that’s why they call it ‘pecking order’.

Now the same video, slowed down to 40% of real time speed.

The duel:

In this video, you can see Mr. Raccoon in the background leaving the porch and walking along the path. We took the food in again, so there was nothing to attract him.

Finally, here’s the vivid Purple Finch from the still photos below. I haven’t seen him at the deck feeder before. He’s much more colorful than the usual Purple Finch, though unfortunately the camera doesn’t pick that up as much as I’d like.

Monday – 1.23.2017

7:55 AM – Last night we took the deck platform feeder in, to discourage the raccoon from visiting. This morning at 7:29 AM I put it back out. By 7:31 there were half dozen White Throated Sparrows in the feeder, having breakfast. By 7:34 there were at least eight of them. That’s a new record.

Here’s a very interesting video that demonstrates how alert (and quick) the sparrows are. Four of them are sitting in the feeder. Suddenly they all fly away. Within a second a hickory nut falls from the branches above and lands in the feeder. It seems no matter how intently the birds are hogging down, they’re still paying attention to their surroundings. If you’re potential hawk-food, I guess that’s a good idea.

We got a new Arlo camera, this one with sound. It works pretty well so far, though we haven’t captured any dramatic bird calls since we put it out yesterday. We are picking up wind noise, so I’ll have to learn to adjust the sensitivity of the pick-up.

Sunday – 1.22.2017

3:15 PM – The rain filled the deck platform feeder with water. It covered up the small seeds the Sparrows eat, resulting in some disappointed birds:

However, the black oil sunflower seeds preferred by the Cardinals floats. He experienced no interruption in service due to weather.

This Mourning Dove has a big enough beak to get whatever he wants out of the water.

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10:25 AM – Plenty of White Throated Sparrows this morning. They moved on and some Purple Finches took over. It’s interesting to watch the interaction between the male and female Finches. The male drives off one female, but allows another to stay in the feeder. His mate?

In the following clip, immediately afterwards, the male and female couple are sharing the feeder. When another female approaches, the male again drives her off.

In subsequent clips, the female finch drives off other females. I conclude that the male and female Finches are a couple, and have higher status than the ‘single’ females that approach the feeder. Or maybe not. One thing is clear, Mr. and Mrs. Purple Finch don’t like to share.

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12:50 AM – The cat that visits periodically came around a while ago, looking for nuts. We took in the deck platform feeder so as not to attract ‘Rocky’ Raccoon, so he had no luck. I’d put out food for the animal but I don’t want him there all the time, and don’t want all the other cats, raccons and possums that would follow him.

Saturday – 1.21.2017

3:00 PM – Some close up images of male Purple Finch. These were taken with a Nikon Coolpix L830 with 34x zoom lens, as an experiment. The videos that are regularly displayed are from the Arlo security cameras. With the Nikon it’s possible to get images and videos of the birds at the other feeders around the yard. But it’s not as easy as the automatic Arlo cams.

9:55 AM – The platform feeder on the deck doesn’t have drainage, so last night’s rain filled it up with water. Here’s a couple of birds coming to terms with that. They look disappointed, but I don’t have much sympathy with that. There are five other feeders around the yard. No one goes hungry. No bird left behind.

4:55 AM – For about 30 minutes last night, ‘Rocky’ Raccoon feasted at the platform feeder, and washed up in the bird bath. Here’s a sample of the videos we captured. He looked really hungry:

In this one he eats voraciously, then gets into the bird bath for a wash:

Finally, ‘Rocky’ overdoes it, and knocks the bath off the rail. Unlike past episodes, he didn’t fall.

As interesting as these videos are, we don’t really want ‘Rocky’ as a regular guest. We’ll probably start bringing the food in at night, and emptying the bird baths.