Tag Archives: Raccoon

Tuesday – 1.31.2017

7:25 AM – The suet feeder, with a new block of nut and berry suet, is popular this morning. Here’s a pair of what we thought were Goldfinches, but are actually Pine Warblers:

And a Carolina Wren:

4:20 AM – Another visit from the raccoon, though this one was brief, and the timing unexpected. He hit the platform feeder at 4:05 AM, about fifteen minutes ago. D and the dog were in the living room, while the bandit was just outside eating the scraps of suet left over from his adventures of last night. A bold move by the bushy scavenger. Occasionally he pauses, as if listening to D on the other side of the wall. Not shown in this video is his exit from the porch, with a large piece of suet to-go in his jaws.

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.

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:

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.

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.

Tuesday – 1.17.2017

4:15 AM – I spotted a squirrel with his left ear missing (most of it, anyway). I supposed he got mauled by a cat. I don’t think squirrels fight that viciously, though maybe they do during mating season. Anyway, it doesn’t see to keep him from eating and drinking.

Don’t see Woodpeckers sitting in the platform feeder very often, but this Red-Bellied Woodpecker is right there. Not for long though. Once he gets a few nuts, he flaps away.

Tuesday – 12.27.2016

5:40 AM – The chopped nuts D puts out on the deck rail attract a lot of birds, but also, the Raccoon. He (or she) is presumably the same one that kept getting in the old (and unstable) bath and falling off the porch. The new birdbath setup is more firmly attached, so we have videos of the Raccoon enjoying the nuts, and splashing around in the water (and looking in our kitchen window). Unfortunately, one of the cameras fogged up, so the video is not great. The other is okay – that’s the one recorded at 3:45 AM. At 3:49 AM D went out on the deck with the dog. I’d just as soon not have any face-to-face encounters, so we’re suspending the chopped nuts for birds program.

Bird Videos – Lots of Them – BUT NOT REALLY

A number of videos we took at the beginning of this project will not display due to the uncertainty of the Word Press storage system. We did some research but couldn’t find a solution, so we are reposting them, one and two at a time, starting in November 2017. They will be the bonus ‘Retro’ videos displayed after the current bird and critter activity.