Squirrel Bungee

OK, off topic, but I have been waiting for what, six months for this? I finally have a bouncie squirrel! I re-pointed the camera, and hope to get some better views, but these two will do for now! See video one and two.

I like the pictures with the cardinal pair, and this might be the best yet. Everybody go ahhhh.

Bird Cam

This week I wanted to allow all access to the webcam, without needing a user name or pass. The webcam locked up, and I could not reset it. After spending lots of time on it, I finally got it back to where I started. It is very finicky, and I will NOT attempt this again. But it is working, see it here, login with nhpa and the pass is birder.

I always wait too long to update this, so I end up with too many pics, and I have to whiddle them down to a manageable amount. I did sort of want to get a video before I posted, and when I finally got it, it was of course disappointing! Anyway, I wanted to get a vid of the squirrel using the bungee. I did see it eating the corn under the bungee, but not trying to get any from the bungee. Now, you may wonder why there was corn on the ground, and here is why! While waiting for the vid, I saw a new visitor. I thought it was a grey catbird, but it didn't quite look right. Then I saw this video, and when I glimpsed the red rump, I knew that is what it is. Here is a pic for the slow connects. So here is the vid of the squirrel getting corn from the bungee. Disappointing, no? Well, now that it knows how to get more, I will raise it up and hope to catch a real bungee jumping squirrel!

While the grackles were hogging the feeders, the HOSP disappeared. I never thought that I would miss them, but I prefer them to grackles! I stopped filling the fly through feeder, and the number of grackles dropped off. Just as quickly as the HOSP left, they have returned. I bought a new feeder, one that the grackles could not get into. I have it up for a couple of weeks now, and I have seen zero activity. Oh well, when the goldfinch find it, I am sure it will be busy. Speaking of zero activity, I still have never seen any hummingbirds. It isn't as bad this year, since I am only cleaning and filling one feeder, compared to four last year.

I have a million pics of the cardinals, both together and separately. Here are my favs since the last post. Here is the pair. Three of the male, the first he looks like a parrot. The second and third. Two of the female, first and the second she almost looks like a different bird?

I am probably forgetting some, but it can wait for the next post, hopefully in two weeks... or less!

Birdcam Comparison

I have had the Bushnell Birdcam long enough to give an evaluation. Do not buy it! How is that? The Wingscapes beats it in almost every way. With the price difference being down to less than $50, there really is no reason to buy the Bushnell. The only thing that the Bushnell has that the Wingscapes does not, is the flash. I do not try for nocturnal birds, so that really is not a plus. It does not work as a fill flash, either. Here is one of the cardinals using the flash, and this is one of the better ones. Here is a video from the Bushnell. I have to laugh at the HOSP hopping around near the end! Here is one of the better stills. This one of a goldfinch is the best video. When in direct sunlight, the Bushnell is capable. I moved the camera to point in a different direction, hopefully it will give better results. The worst part about the Bushnell? When you replace the batteries, it does not remember the settings for time, date, video or still, low or high res. Since it uses batteries quicker than the Wingscapes, that is a pain.

I did not see the grosbeak since the last post. Guess it was just passing through. That is the only new bird that I saw since putting up the fly through feeder. If I had this to do over, I would not have installed it. I never had such a problem with grackles! All I get is thousands of pics of grackles, with jays, mockers, doves, cowbirds and starlings. When I go to clean the birdbath at the end of the day, all the water is gone and there is a layer of mud. I think the grackles catch worms, then dip them to clean them off.

I did have a couple of incidents that stand out. A mocker landed about a few feet away from me. I looked at it and said, 'what are you doing?' So then it flew up onto the garage roof. I'm guessing, this is the same one from the last post. The other story, I came walking around the corner, to the tube feeder. All the birds flew off, as they always do, except a blue jay. It sat there and looked at me, then went back to feeding. I waited a bit, then told it to take a hike! And it did.

Anyway, wonder who won this standoff? One and two. Finally, is this a duck?

Birdcam

I cleaned the fly through feeder, and moved the birdcam to point to it. While I was finishing up, a mockingbird landed on the garage roof, and sat there patiently, watching me. As soon as I walked away, it flew into the feeder and commenced to make a racket! I figured that it was directed at me, since the feeder was still empty. Then another mocker landed aside the first, and they started fighting, while still making a ruckus. They flew into the tree, near the feeder, and continued to make a lot of noise and tussle. I no longer thought that they were fighting. :) I filled the feeder, but by then they had flown off. The next night I walked out to check the rain gage, and there was a mocker in the feeder. As soon as I got close, it started making that ruckus again, and flew off while still squawking. So, maybe it was directed at me the first time?

I bought my Wingscapes Birdcam in March of last year. It worked well until December. I contacted their customer service, and they shipped me another birdcam, with a postage paid box and label. I thought that this was pretty good service, but the one that they sent me had a problem, too. So, they sent me another. I had trouble with that one, too! I lost track, did they ship 2 or 3? I don't know. The audio is bad on this one. I do not know what to think, the camera worked perfectly for the first 3/4 of a year. I wonder if they do not check the cameras well enough when someone returns one? So, I thought about buying a new one. When I bought the first one, they were pretty much the same price on all online shops. But I noticed, suddenly you can find them for $150.00, $100 off! So now I am wondering, are they coming out with a new camera? I don't know.

Bushnell makes a birdcam version of their Trailcam. On paper, it sounded like a good camera. I searched for blogs with pics from this camera, but I could not find any. So I ordered one anyway! I have it in place for about three days, now. I have to say, I am sort of under whelmed. Here is a pic from the camera. It is sort of a tricky camera shot, but the Wingscapes has taken much better pics from there. Here are a couple, a bunch of grackles, and some HOSP amidst petals from the ornamental cherry tree. I plan to point the Bushnell at the birdbath, see how well it really works. I should mention, I received little information with this camera. I read somewhere that, one GB is the largest memory card that it can handle. I still do not no if that is true, since I did not take any chances, and ordered only a one GB card.


As I mentioned before, the new feeders attract a lot of undesirables. This one looks demonic! And I get a kazillion pics of grackles and starlings in both feeders. Guess I will have to do something about this. It does look comical, but does not appear to be going away.

I kept the best for last! When I saw the first pic of this guy, (and it is a guy,) I thought it was a downy. It had it's head down, and had it's back towards me. When I saw this pic, I realized this was a new visitor. Checking the guides, I can tell you, it is a rose breasted grosbeak. Grosbeak means, gross beak, literally. Look at the size of that thing!

Feeders Installed

Both of the covered platform feeders are now in place. I have to say, I like them both! I was worried about the large feeder being too heavy for the skimpy pole, but it is designed to be used on one. It comes with a compression mount, where you slip it on a one inch pole, and turn it tight. Very nice! Most feeders do not come with a mount. My only knock on this one is, it does not have a removable screen. Still, I would recommend them both. One thing about the ground feeder, it seems to attract more of the undesirable birds. Although I do like some, see the pic of HOSP in fog. I get tons of pics of cow birds and starlings, which I do not. On the other hand, I wouldn't see some birds without them.

I had a computer melt down, but I was able to pull my pics from it. I had a couple of the brown thrush, and I haven't seen it since, and I believe it moved on. I also had this chipping sparrow, pictured in the lower right. There are a pair of them in this pic.

It would be nice to see some hummingbirds this year, it is a pain to clean and fill their feeders. They should be seen here in April, according to this map.

Platform Feeders

I saw that the ground feeder was getting a lot of action, so I moved the Birdcam to point at it. One problem with the ground feeder, see it here. Not sure what to do about that.

I moved the platform feeder, from under the tree, to a pole mount. You can see it in the pic. The pic is from my Weathercam. Click on preset 5 to view the feeder. You can also see a hummingbird feeder in this pic. I was not going to put them up this year, since I saw zero hummingbird activity last year, but I decided to put up ONE feeder.

It was raining all day, so I amused myself by watching the web cam, log in- nhpa, pass- birder. The goldfinch, HOFI and HOSP were entertaining. I also saw both the male and female cardinals. Up until recently, I had never seen them together, but now I see this pretty regularly. I uploaded another video of them to utube. The audio is OK on this one, not that there is anything to hear!

Since it was raining all day, I got to thinking about the seed getting wet. The hanging feeder had a dome covering it. Neither of them are covered, now. So I decided to replace the feeders with covered ones. I found this one. Hope my skimpy pole can hold it! Also, I thought this ground feeder looked nice. Won't do anything for groundhogs, though.

edit- Since you need an ID to leave a comment, I put my email address in the info bar on right. Please do not hesitate to write!

New Visitor

Last Sunday as you can see in the pic, we had a hailstorm. Pity the poor birds that cannot get out of the weather! I have fruit suet in the feeder pictured, hoping to attract robins. So far they haven't gone for it. I guess they have plenty of other food, now. They are around, I saw a number of them in the last week or so.

Here is a video of the female card. I uploaded it to utube, because I think the quality is better. Maybe it's me. A pic of her, for the bandwidth challenged. The gold is coming out in the goldfinch. I remember the first time I saw a pair of them. I did not know what they were, but their color sure made them stand out!

So I saw this new visitor in the yard. It hopped over to the squirrel bungee, and ate a piece of corn laying on the grass. It is larger than a wren, and it looks like a brown thrasher, but I really do not know what it is. Please leave a comment, if you know what it is.

My favorite bird forum is Garden Web. This moring I was getting the message, "Services for this domain have been discontinued". Whew! It is back now, had me worried!