Science and Technology

Bluebird at the box

| edwinridout

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuiKhQ5mhag”
Our Wildview camera’s video of a bluebird at the bluebird box 21 May 2011, 4:23pm. Only a week ago we though this box was occupied by chickadee chicks. After Youtube starts, you can activate the full-screen option by clicking an icon in lower right which looks like one of these:      

Owls

| edwinridout

Still no sign of owl interest in Sandy’s barred owl nesting box. We have started to hear owls in the distance over the last few weeks. I could hear a barred owl this morning before dawn today, and even before dusk yesterday. We’ve also heard another owl, possibly the Great Horned. This morning’s email brought this from Rob Bierregaard at Univ North Carolina, Charlotte (whose plans I followed in building Sandy’s owl box):

. . . we’re back on the internet airwaves with a NestCam in a Charlotte Barred Owl nest box.

This is a new box. Our old faithful pair (Percy and Mrs. Percy) did not use their box. I suspect Mrs. Percy may have come to an untimely end. Percy was scraping in the nest box back in January, and has been delivering food to a female, but they didn’t use the box.

The pair we’re following this year has always started nesting very late. 2 years ago when we first got them in a box, I put the box up on the 1st of February, knowing that that was way too late for them to nest that year. A month later the female laid eggs. Hatch this year was about the 20th and 22nd of April, at which point some Charlotte pairs had young out of the nest already.

Go to this cornell.edu website to watch the cam. [Pick Select a Cam, then Barred Owl, NC.] We should have about 4 more weeks to watch the young grow. It will be interesting to see how they respond to the big 17-year cicada hatch predicted for this year.

Bluebird box: no luck yet

| edwinridout

March 27 through April 2, 2011 — 54 pictures in 54 seconds, with the Wildview camera pointed at the bluebird box. Although I saw a chickadee exit the box last weekend, I definitely saw a bluebird peering into the box yesterday, with a partner on a twig nearby. So why didn’t the camera see them?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TntOoHk8Qys

Evidently the camera needs to be on a pole almost adjacent to the nesting box. A 150% enlargement from one of the chickadee shots:

Still no luck with the owl box

| edwinridout


Still no luck with the owl box, nor with the Wildview camera, really. I removed the second squirrel nest and installed fresh bedding of a few wood chips, leaves, etc. And since the camera had this time failed to get a single shot of the squirrel coming and going, I moved it to a tree five feet closer, even though it’s now going to be pointing close to the setting sun.

Here’s the Wildview camera:

Sandy’s Barred Owl Nesting Box: status

| edwinridout

Still no owl pictures to show. I got out the big ladder this afternoon for a visit to the Wildcam camera on the tree opposite Sandy’s barred owl nesting box.

Retrieved 36 images from the SD memory card and replaced the four C cells (two corroded). Camera was displaying the low-battery indicator, but the correct date. The images were dated January 8-21, 2011. As you can see above, from the location of the camera I could see twigs and even green leaves in the opening of the nesting box. We’ve read that barred owls do not add materials to a nesting place — but sometimes squirrels render an owl box uninhabitable to owls by filling it with debris. I moved the ladder from the camera to the nesting box and knocked on the door, but heard no response, and so began reaching in and removing a quantity of twigs. A grey furry blur flew out so fast that I couldn’t really know it was a squirrel until it hit the forest floor 15 feet below. I realized there was another one in there too, so opened the trap door rather than insert my hand again. Number two disappeared just as fast, with no apparent injury from the fall.
Here’s a video clip from the six color photos dated January 8th. The four-second pause on each corresponds to the camera’s four-second pause between each shot. Warning: there’s not much to see here: Squirrels briefly visible, coming or going

Conclusions:
1. Clearly at 15 feet distant, the camera is too far away from the nesting box. There is a tree five feet closer, but it would have the camera pointing west instead of north.
2. The camera’s infra-red functionality seems inadequate for the current 15-foot distance. The early morning and late afternoon shots in black-and-white aren’t of much use.
2. The camera’s motion-detector seems to be tripped by the motion of the trees in the wind. (When we trained the camera last fall on bird feeders hung from wires, we got many pictures of swinging but unattended feeders.)

About the nesting box itself, see Projects, above.