It came as quite a surprise when I saw a Coal Tit investigate right inside the shelter when the unit was running.
I had to check that it was actually working. The red LED could be seen so it should have been. The only way for me to 'hear' it was to get the bat detector which tuned in to it OK and all was well.
Next was to get some idea of how loud it was that close to the unit. For that I used an iPhone app to measure the sound level
Peak 84dB and a maximum of 103dB.
84dB equates to city traffic noise inside a car,
103dB to being about a metre away from a power mower.
So obviously it was either a deaf Coal Tit or, more probably, high pitched as the sounds are for us they may well have been too low pitched to worry the bird.
Penny's First Visit to the Vet
Madam went hurtling down the garden after some creature or other first thing this morning. I know she couldn't turn a corner fast enough as I hear her crash in to something. She came back with several cuts and scrapes to her back legs and feeling very sorry for herself. This is not the first time she has had the odd scrape as greyhounds have thin skin which is easily damaged. One cut looked worse than usual so I phoned the vets and she was checked over this morning. While there she had her booster jab and we came away with some concoction to bathe her wounds as nothing was serious enough to need stitching, just to keep infection out. She was fit enough for a short, slow walk at lunch time.
Uploading to Flickr and YouTube
Even with the change of router I still had problems from time to time with uploads stopping part way through until I found Firefox Universal Uploader (FileUploader), an extension for the Firefox browser. It is not perfect in that it always shows 100% as soon as the upload starts so I cannot tell how fast things are going. It does show a green tick once the upload is finished and the site returns a confirmation and it has never failed to upload a file for me.
A deaf coal tit. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad Penny is alright. That's your beer money spent for this week.
More like beer money spent for the rest of the month. Good job Jacobs Creek is only a fiver a bottle!
DeleteYou amaze me with your gadgets and technology John! Good idea, I need one of those for rats to keep them away from the bird feeders!
ReplyDeleteI have had an interest in tinkering with gadgets since I was about 13 Maree. Touch wood rats have been scarce here this year, so far.
DeleteI installed one of the 'cat screamers' near my pond, I had the trick from a friend that it keeps frogs away and it seems to work pretty well. But I had it disguised under an ornament I got from ukwaterfeatures.com and sparrows would often perch on the ornament, so maybe it's something to do with birds' hearing that they don't mind/notice it.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to work with most cats, but unfortunately not all. I should think smaller ears are designed for higher pitched sounds.
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