Wings on Wednesday

It is a long time since I last had a Wings on Wednesday entry. Amazingly, for the time of year, there has been a dearth of birds visiting the garden this month. Every now and then there is a rush of House Sparrows or Starlings and the Great Tits and Coal Tits are pretty regular but the numbers are well down so far this Winter.

One fleeting visitor was a Stock Dove. I haven't seen one of those for months so this was a welcome sighting.



Not quite so welcome was an early morning visit from a Sparrowhawk. This one was sat on the back of an old wooden chair right next to the Birdy Bistro. What I particularly noticed was the way it had its darker back facing outwards which made it blend in better with the fence in the background.



As soon as it spotted me it flew away to hunt for breakfast elsewhere.

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Rain Gauge:

Only a little further with the rain gauge project. Added the ability to switch off the lCD readout in software. The collector is now outside and the electronics in the conservatory while I see how well it works. 3 mm rain recorded yesterday, 4 mm so far this morning.

The unit uses a 9V wall wart power supply but also automatically changes over to a battery during any power interruption - a far from unknown event in this area.

I have decided to change the Arduino Nano for a Mega as the Mega has internal memory I can use to store the results which looks easier to program than the SD card.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Two Gold Stars awarded for last week's Guess What. Adrian for correctly identifying Lichen and Bonnie for saying some sort of fungi and a Lichen is a combination of a fungus and algae (see British Lichens, What are Lichens?). Well done both of you.

I wonder how you will get on with this week's Guess What.

iPhone4 using Camera+ app and add on macro lens

Clue: Was it Blackbirds or Starlings whot done it?

No prizes, just for fun.

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When I am building my electronic projects I usually end up with a rats nest of wiring. I couldn't resist taking this shot of a BT engineer working on the phone line junction box opposite my bungalow. How do they ever work out which wire goes to which building? Makes me wonder how I manage to get up to 7Mbits download through copper wire.

Still - as long as it keeps working!

An Experiment for Shirl

Shirl (Shirl's Gardenwatch) mentioned to me about the ability to use nature reserve scopes with a mobile phone camera. This morning I experimented with my binoculars and iPhone4. I clamped the binoculars to a tripod to hold them steady, focussed on the bird table down the end of the garden and, using the basic camera app, just held the phone camera tight up to the binoculars. A bit of jiggling about to get the phone lens in the right place. No processing of any sort on these photos, apart from the final crop.

The view as seen by the iPhone through the kitchen window:




The shot as taken through the binoculars:

 

Same thing cropped as the view through the binoculars does not fill the frame:



The phone needs to be as near as possible to the binoculars / scope lens so the rubber eye cup was pushed back as far as it would go. The auto focus on the phone camera did the rest as far as focus and exposure went.

Certainly worth a try if the phone is the only camera you have with you in that sort of situation. Gives a reasonable record shot if nothing else.

Fishy Photos

Well fish-eye photos really. A couple of photos of my pond taken with the iPhone fitted with a clip on fish-eye lens. Not the most brilliantly sharp lens combination I have ever used but worth an experiment or two. Must try it with the turntable one day and see how things look. More about the lens another day.

iPhone4 with fish-eye add on lens

iPhone4 with fish-eye add on lens.

Even though it has lost most of its leaves my small standard rose is still producing bloom.

As you can gather I am out of new videos this Friday. I was hoping to get some of a visiting woodpecker. I had moved both peanut feeders to the Birdy Bistro near the kitchen when I spotted a woodpecker on the top rail. Unfortunately it spotted me and flew away. Then I moved a feeder back towards the end of the garden next to the camera which monitored the bird table so I am hoping it will capture some video when next it visits.

Macro on Monday - What's That?

Oh dear. Last week's What's That must have been a lot more difficult than I anticipated so the Gold Star has stayed snugly tucked up in the safe for another week. No one managed to work out that it was a part view of a snail shell....

Obvious now you can see the original shot.

I wonder how you will get on with the new mystery macro shot.

Guess What:

iPhone4 with mini microscope attachment

More of this about than usual with all the dull damp weather.

No prizes, just for fun.

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How many people buy the Daily Express I wonder. If so they must be gluttons for bad news. Each day I have a look at the front pages of many UK dailies on the 'frontpagestoday' web site. It appears to me that the Express deserves a gold star for frequently having the gloomiest front page. Today the banner headline is a weather forecast. We are in for temperatures down to -15C by the end of the month with two weeks of "freezing misery". At least I have got my shoe spikes ready. In fact I have had to use then twice already this Autumn and Penny has worn her nice padded waterproof coat.

Friday at the Flicks - Great Tit Roosting

Stumped once again for anything really new or outstanding this week. It seems that the Great Tit is roosting in the camera nestbox every night and leaves by first light. This was taken last Sunday morning as she (well it was a she which roosted last year) woke and left the box.





Rain Gauge:

Making progress slowly. Last Saturday I decided to start programming the section of code which counts the number of times the seasaw in the rain gauge flips. Most of the time the seasaw is moving the reed switch is closed so I had to devise a way of constantly and rapidly checking when the flip had finished. I thought it would take about an hour experimenting. In the end it took about two and a half hours as initially I just couldn't get the code to do what I expected. Anyway solved it eventually and set it up in the kitchen sink to give it a real test. You can hear the seasaw flip over and the count shows every other flip which relates to 1mm of rainfall.




I searched high and low for a box to put the electronics in but all those I had were too small so I ordered one which arrived yesterday. I had 'fun' cutting a rectangular hole in the plastic front for the LCD readout but got there in the end. First I drilled a few holes as guides for the corners and then used a side cutting bit from a RotoZip in my battery drill to make a rough rectangle and finally filed it to shape.



Still a long way to go to finish all the coding for storing and displaying rainfall records. At least it keeps the remaining grey cell active.

Who Put That There?

Fireworks were much nearer and louder last night. Initially Penny was a bit restless, mainly because she could see the flashes on the monitor. Then she moved to a darker spot and went to sleep so all in all the evening passed well. There have been nowhere near as many noisy rockets this year - another sign that money is tight for many families.

About 9 p.m. she decided it was time to go in the back garden and water the grass. I think we were both surprised to see the remains of a rocket had landed, burying itself nose first in the soggy ground. Usually the morning following a nearby firework display I manage to collect a few of these. They make excellent garden canes for tall flowers.

I'm sure that wasn't there at tea time!

The flash from the camera shows how well her reflective collar works. That is often the only piece of her I can see when she wanders round the garden at night.