Just a quick note to let you know that I'm making progress on the eBirdseed.com outdoor bird cam. (See link below.) Basically, the wireless doo-hickey (router) that receives the video signal and networking info from the streaming cam computer went belly up. (Routers are notorious for their propensity to turn turtle. Just consider yesterday's air traffic debacle.) To get a better sense of our issue, see the Oct 16, 2009 "Nor' Easter, and T-Shooting a Cam" and check out the diagram below:

Ya' see that "Wireless Signal" and that "Wireless Router" in the snap above? Well, they ain't doing the "Wireless Rumba" with any of our computers anymore. Sooo... To borrow from Felix Unger, "Sew Buttons!" I'll hard wire the reprobate signal right into the network. Take that you "Wireless Weasel". (I'm sorry that I drone on about this technical stuff as much as I do, but the fact is that people love these bird cams, and it's important to keep folks in the loop.)

As for the summer(s) past... There are times when it's fun to just roam through the photo library and see what jumps out. How about this...

For the life of me, I have no idea how I missed that photograph along the way... Obviously, it's a downy and a goldfinch, but look at the brown on the back of the finch... Yeah, yeah, yeah... I know... It's all moot - the birds are long gone. What's the difference? Quite frankly, I don't know what the big deal is. It's just the silly fun of discovery, that's all - kind of like fixing a network.

What else? Oh! If you don't read the online Science Daily magazine, you might want to check it out. here's a great piece on a museum butterfly house, and another on creating a butterfly garden. (And yes, SD has a whole section on birds.) Very cool...

See you by the feeders,

CapeCodAlan

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding

eBirdseed.com photo library

eBirdseed and misc. references

Other birding references

eBirdseed.com bird cam

Posted by CapeCodAlan at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Man oh man oh man... Does that shot above reflect the pensive nature of my day... The computer that controls our outdoor cam has lost its ability to establish a network connection. Winsocks, TCP/IP stacks, HW... I'm pretty sure I've tried everything short of kneeing it in the Netherworld and calling it "Waldo". Nothing to do but keep on keeping on. I'll let you know when the system is back up again.

Onward...

For some reason the bird activity has been slow around here lately. I'm not sure if the turkeys are scaring them away, or if there's a hawk watching, but in any event, the feeders have seen little action. (Though I did see a small pile of feathers, so maybe that explains everything.) Ah, the joys of the backyard.

What else? Well, believe it or not, we've had 511 posts on this blog. Of those, I wrote 482 not counting this one. I wouldn't even guess at the number of readers. But to give you some idea, our (now un-cooperative) bird cam has gotten over 18,000 views (22,000 if you count the first iteration of the camera). Anywho, I'm inching up on the 500 post mark... Not sure what I will do to celebrate the Big Five Oh Oh. Just brace yourself.

Better run and see if I can't fix that stoopid streaming gadget... See you by the feeders,

CapeCodAlan

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding

eBirdseed.com photo library

eBirdseed and misc. references

Other birding references

eBirdseed.com bird cam

Posted by CapeCodAlan at 2:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yeah, this isn't the mostly politically correct of posts, but given the season, it seems only fitting that you get to see the popular banquet in the flesh if you will...

The photo above reminds me of the lyrics of an old jazz/blues tune by Johnny Mercer,

The next pics were taken of a gobbler that was standing on the railing of our deck..

The two photographs above should give everyone reason to give these creatures a wide berth. (And that's to say nothing of the wings!)

So where's that gravy? Just kidding, just kidding. Truth be told, the turkey hunting season has come and gone in Massachusetts. Consider also the ever shrinking hunting grounds, and this Thanksgiving will no doubt be fueled by store-bought bird. And I'm not saying that that is necessarily a bad thing, but I am saying that I can understand why some folks might prefer to harvest their own toms and/or hens.

No, I'm not a hunter, but consider this... The average adult wild turkey weighs between 16 and 24 pounds. On the other hand, a commercially grown turkey may weigh up to 40 pounds. Hmmm... I can see why people might think twice about buying a dinner that has been so hybridized that it can't even mate and the hens have to be artificially inseminated... Ummm... Yeah, that would make some think twice. There's something to be said for the good old fashioned way. (Why do I get this feeling that there "frustrated female gobbler" jokes and "masculine avian feelings of inadequacy" jokes starting to simmer?)

Time to go...

See you by the feeders,

CapeCodAlan

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding

eBirdseed.com photo library

eBirdseed and misc. references

Other birding references

eBirdseed.com bird cam

Posted by CapeCodAlan at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First, here's another quick screen shot of a turkey at ground level. (Forgive the blurriness... We're expecting the remnants of tropical storm Ida, and I placed a glass jar over the cam.)

And in order to truly automate the screen shots of a streaming video (I don't have frame-grabber software), I jury rigged our NovaBird motion-triggered camera such that it stared at a fluttering ribbon buffeted by a fan. (The ribbon curves gently in the bottom left of the closest monitor.)

For the life of me, I don't know why this kind of bird observation and photography guns my motor, but it does. There's something about the "remote", yet at the same being in the "middle-of the-action" nature of it. I guess that it's just one of those things that a person does for the good of the inner being...

Aside from the turkeys and the crows, there wasn't much happening today. (Ya know, those turkeys really are bullies. It seems that they don't hesitate to charge anything that they perceive as being a threat - squirrels, crows, big critter or small... Thankfully, I've found the secret anti-turkey weapon - the menacing, descending-from-the-clouds comfy deck-chair cushion. Oooh... Scary!)

Lastly, as mentioned before, we're working our way through the shards of Ida. Probably will be raining by morning. Looks like coastal Virginia took a pretty tough hit... Thoughts are with you...

See you by the feeders,

CapeCodAlan

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding

eBirdseed.com photo library

eBirdseed and misc. references

Other birding references

eBirdseed.com bird cam

Posted by CapeCodAlan at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Just stumbled upon the coolest "night-time hobby": Backyard Night Fishing, (BNF for short). BNF consists of bringing up our streaming bird cam at night and resizing the window such that it occupies a minimal amount of screen and yet is still viewable. Then go back to whatever, and from time to time restore the cam window and see if you've got any "hits". (That is, see if you've stumbled upon some creature of the night. See below...)

The fun of Backyard Day Fishing (BDF) is obvious. "How many types of birds did you see today?" But BNF is more sublime. The question becomes more of, "What kind of critter did you see last night?" The possum above is just one example. Here's a raccoon also from prior PM...

Not bad - two strikes within a single evening. But of course, the trick becomes that of actually recording the sightings. At first, I just kept the digital camera at the ready, and that worked out fine, except that should a visitor appear it was a hassle to fire up the camera, focus, steady and shoot. Nope, there had to be a better way. Enter the "NovaBird BNF Monitoring System" or "NBBNFMS" (or better still, the "NB²NFMS" - pronounced "en-bee squared-en-fims"...)

(Yeah, I need help...)

Just a quick wave of the hand, and the green, tripod-mounted, motion-activated NovaBird would come to life and the shot was mine. This is especially handy in a multiple PC/multiple monitor environment!

But there's one more avenue when it comes to optimizing the BNF experience... Introduce some sort of a trigger that entices the NovaBird to fire every few seconds. Behold the "Triggered NovaBird Backyard Night Fishing Monitoring System, or "TNB²NFMS" - pronounced... Oh never mind. The game plan here is to bring up the time.gov ticking clock and use it to regularly photograph whatever was on the screen before it...

(Yeah, I really need help...)

Anywho... This is just one more way you can have a blast with feeders, even if you don't have any... Just tune into ours... Now all we have to do is come up with some sort of BNF rating system. Let's see... five points for a raccoon, five points for a possum, 15 points for a fox, 15 points for coyote, 50 points for an owl, and 100 points for a bigfoot. Just be aware that I'm going to use every Rube Goldberg assembly to play the game. Just like in fishing.

See you by the feeders,

CapeCodAlan

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding

eBirdseed.com photo library

eBirdseed and misc. references

Other birding references

eBirdseed.com bird cam

Posted by CapeCodAlan at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, here's a nice way to start a post...

Nothing like a beautiful hydrangea to get the ball rolling. And let's keep it rolling with a cape rose...

It might seem a little unusual to have blossoms like these so late in the season, but on Cape Cod, you just never know. (BTW... You do know that there are over 1,000 images like the hydrangea and the cape rose in our library free for the taking... Makes for fine wallpaper. And if you can't find what you're looking for, just holler. We've got a pretty respectable selection of the local birds.)

Onward...

Once again, the turkeys didn't "play well with others", and one of the ruffians charged me again today. Now that I've seen this behavior a few times, I'm beginning to wonder if the creatures are actually charging, or on the other hand just rushing forward to be fed by hand. I certainly hope it's not the latter. It's one thing to put feed in feeders and then leave the wild animals alone; it's entirely another to try to make pets out of them by hand feeding. In any event, this is wearing thin. Thankfully, we keep a comfy cushion on the deck - it's as harmless as a nerf ball, but looks positively "turkey menacing" when it flutters down from on high. If I scare them away forever (yeah right), so be it. I'd rather they re-gain their natural fear of humans than have one of them (or a person) get hurt.

What else?

Hey! Real quick... Remember that killer pork recipe? Well here's something even easier that's destined for the grill. Mix up a quarter cup of A1 with a like amount of Italian salad dressing and set that aside. Next, take a one pound pork tenderloin and butterfly it. Plop the pork in with the A1/salad dressing melange in a vacuum bag and using one of those kitchen air-sucker gadgets, asphyxiate the whole deal. Refrigerate for a day. Grill 'til thoroughly cooked and enjoy.

See you by the feeders,

CapeCodAlan

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding

eBirdseed.com photo library

eBirdseed and misc. references

Other birding references

eBirdseed.com bird cam

Posted by CapeCodAlan at 9:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Let's start off with big ol' Tom Turkey...

Beautiful creatures... they truly are. But note the toes and claws - not things to be taken lightly. This one by the way is just one of a rafter of seven that visit us almost on a daily basis. (Did you know that Ben Franklin preferred the turkey over the eagle as our national bird? Here is a link to a fascinating letter Franklin wrote to his daughter in 1784 arguing his case. The only input I might add is that a person doesn't have to be dressed in red to be attacked by one of these monsters.)

The next bit of business is a particularly silly USB experiment... Mrs. CCA and I got to wondering why the max USB cable length was only apx. 16 feet. (I'd looked at a ton of Web sites and got conflicting info. The issue seemed to be that of signal delay vs. signal deterioration. We figured that if we could get our cheap but colorful USB cam out back by the feeders, well then we'd really be "cammed up and streamin' large". After all, we could live with delay as long as the signal quality didn't suffer.) Sooo... We bought five sixteen footers and hooked them all together for a total of 80 feet.

(Why is it that you just know that this ain't going to happen?) And not happen it did. The computer wouldn't even boot. My guess is that the added resistivity of all those cables flummoxed the USB port, which in turn yacked at the initial hardware portion of the PC's boot sequence. We unplugged the mess and hooked it back to the way it was with the single short cable and all was well again... Sigh... And that leads us to the screen shot of the two cams below...

The live streaming puppy on the left is our eBirdseed.com bird cam. The one on the right is our front lawn USB cam. (If only we could have gotten the latter out back and outdoors... Dang!) Anywho, it's late now, and those cameras offer strange company. (Ok, so the USB rascal ain't exactly enthralling in the PM with the shade down and a motionless note.) But the one on the left is ghostly in its camaraderie. It's almost as if a creature will come hulking out of the woods in the background. Did you ever see the Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"?

Hmmm... That's enough for tonight...

See you by the feeders,

CapeCodAlan

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding

Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding

eBirdseed.com photo library

eBirdseed and misc. references

Other birding references

eBirdseed.com bird cam

Posted by CapeCodAlan at 2:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)