Hedgehog Visitor

Well, it's been nearly a month since I had anything new to report on the garden wildlife front. The Bluetits have been visiting the camera nestbox several times every day. Always the same routine. One enters and waits. The second one arrives and the first immediately leaves.

During the spell of milder weather there were no visits by the Pied Wagtail but it has returned now the frosts have returned.

The hedgehog I mentioned some time ago has been visiting the garden every night. Yesterday I got round to fixing up the camera in the Hedgehog House.



It seems to be thriving well and appears non the worse for being out of hibernation so early.

A Rare Opportunity ....

.... to see this Old Codger actually doing something! The camera which observes any activity around the bird feeders kept a record of the slim, handsome old codger who writes all this guff doing what he does least - get off his backside and and take in some fresh air and exercise! The video recordings were re-processed at 8x normal speed and a soundtrack added as the original sound was mainly wind noise.



The soundtrack is one I made when experimenting with an app called ChordBot on an iPad about nine years ago. Next job is to clean up the top of the storage box, then enjoy watching which birds visit for a free meal.

Twoo is That Visiting?

I have recently changed all my surveillance / security cameras to a wi-fi setup. One camera now points towards the bird table and, as with all of them, is set to record when anything in its sight moves. This morning I checked the recordings from this camera and was surprised to see an owl had landed on top of the bird table.



I have seen a mouse scurrying about in that area in the past so I guess that is what attracted the owl.

Now I can see how much the camera covers I intend to increase the number of bird feeders in that area. The wi-fi cameras are connected to their own base station which is also a recorder. Real time coverage can be watched on a monitor and any movement is automatically recorded. Unfortunately it didn't seem to detect the moment the owl flew away.

Copying the saved file to a USB stick is easy. Unfortunately the version of .avi used is unrecognised by all but one of the Mac video player apps I have. That app doesn't have the facility to convert videos to another format. In the end I have to use Quick Time Player to screen record while Total Video Player played the .avi! Even the Mac version of HandBrake didn't recognise that video format.
P.S. Finally found a new version of HandBrake which does the job.

Hedgehog Visit in Colour

First colour footage I've captured in a while. I spent yesterday installing new security cameras and moved one of the older ones to cover the garden near the Hedgehog House. There is also a 10W LED floodlight nearby which gave enough light for the camera to video in colour - just.



The camera (a TP-Link Tapo C310) has an SD card to which it records any movement spotted. I then view and download those to the Tapo app on my phone and transfer them to the laptop. Finally I used Wondershare Filmora X to make the final video. Maybe a 15W floodlight would give less pixelling on the videos. I have a 15W one elsewhere and the Hedgehogs don't seem to bother about it.

First LCD Microscope Videos

I went out looking for a pill bug. Normally they are everywhere but this time they all remained hidden. Par for the course. Then I remembered the position of an ant nest so spent ages trying to persuade one to stay in the dish I had taken out. Nippy little blighters in more ways than one. In the end I managed to capture one and it was only when I had the dish under the microscope I found I had also caught a couple of other creatures.



So, we have an ant and what appears to me to be a mite. It was smaller than a red spider mite, hardly the size of a speck of dust and only just viewable with the naked eye. What the creature that reminds me of a hermit crab is I have no idea as yet. It was even smaller than the mite. The zoomed section was done in processing the video. All other parts are exactly as taken by the microscope. The only addition was using an external lamp to help with illumination.

One thing to note is the build in LEDs can reflect back in the camera lens but the microscope is designed so it can be tilted to get round this.

Pollen Beetle Video Re-visited

In his comment yesterday Adrian (Adrian's Images) wondered how much it would be possible to crop the video clips from yesterday. I experimenting with what is know as a Ken Burns zoom in iMovie (where you set start and end sizes of crop and the software slowly moves from one to the other) on two of the clips. It worked better on the first one where the lens was just set to zoom as there is a better depth of field. The result: (no music this time)



Not at all bad.

Pollen Beetle - Video

OK. So I spent a bit more on the new set up. I found a mint condition used EF-M 28mm macro lens that I had my eye on. Lets me get within about an inch of a subject and has LED lighting built in round the front lens. No extra batteries needed as they take the power from the camera battery.





The LEDs are not over bright. Good enough when that close to a subject to add some illumination to darker areas of the subject. Switchable at two light intensities. Choice of left, right or both on.

I had looked round for something to test it on and found some flowers which had pollen beetles. It took three attempts. Just as I had the first fixed in place the beetle flew away. On the second attempt the beetle dropped off. It was a case of third time lucky.

After a few still photo takes I though it would be more interesting to make a video. One great facility when shooting video is the ability to use the touch screen and change the area for the lens to focus on. Either tap a new place or drag the focal area box to a new position for a smooth change in focus.



Enough ramble - on to the video. (No tweaking, exactly as taken at 1080p HD)



 
1st clip with the lens set to macro, the others with the setting on 'super macro'

Going Slow

Adrian asked me what the video is like on the iPhone 6s.

Standard video can be recorded at 720p or 1080p HD
Also built in is a slow motion mode:
1080p at 120 frames per second and 720p at 240 frames per second.
Some modes are auto stabilised.

This is my first attempt at moving in close with slow motion set at 240 fps:


Soundtrack music by Christian Bjoerklund from the Free Music Archive.

Wondering whether these are the bees which took over the nestbox.
Love the one which videobombed the action in the last clip.
I can see me having great fun with this mode in the Summer.
Haven't worked out yet as to why the motion speeds up at the end of each clip.

For standard video the lens is quite wide angle, as with most mobile phones.
I've just had a quick go with that.
Also built in are time lapse video and panorama stills modes.