Bank Holiday Monday brought wall to wall Sunshine without being too hot, at least until the heavy rain arrived after tea time. So far this month we have had 40mm of rain.
I remembered I had another stand that could be used to hold the Toshiba X-Sports. Originally it was an iPad stand so I removed the iPad holder and clamped the X-Sports case. That gave a good clearance from the metal parts:
Another advantage of this stand is the ability to hold the camera across, above or below things when needed. Set up the iPod Touch in the Summerhouse, put my feet up and waited.
The birds couldn't see me from the feeders so it was an ideal place to enjoy a bit of fresh air and bird watching.
This is the first time I have tried the 'side by side' effect for combining movie clips in iMovie:
Last week's mystery photo might well have been a close shot of a vegetable peeler but my congratulations and the virtual Midmarsh Gold Stars go to Adrian, Wilma, Ragged Robin and ImaBurdie who all correctly identified the eye of a needle. Don't know whether this might really be called a tapestry needle with its thicker shank and large eye but it's the size I need to see to thread these days.
As always my thanks to all who have a go.
On to this week's close crop of a mystery object.
Guess What:
Please leave any guesses in the comments.
They will be revealed, along with the answer, next Monday.
No prizes, just for fun and maybe a virtual Midmarsh gold or silver star.
'Twas a good job I woke a bit earlier than usual on Sunday morning. Heavy rain was forecast and it was just beginning to drizzle so we went walkabout before things got worse. For once the forecasts were correct as heavy rain set in by 6.30 a.m. and it didn't clear until 1 p.m.. At least the 16mm of rain had topped up my rain water containers and given the land, which had become parched, a good watering.
As often happens in heavy rain one of the Wood Pigeons took advantage to have a good shower:
They will spend time first raising one wing and leaning over to get everything wet. Then they will raise the other wing and keep alternating until they are thoroughly soaked. I managed to take some video clips which I will save for Friday at the Flicks.
The temperature had risen nicely but by teatime we were again having heavy rain but this time accompanied by a thunder storm which means poor old Penny was having one of her panic attacks, shivering and panting. She really is badly affected by thunder.
Fortunately the storm passed through very quickly and was followed by nice Sunset to end the day:
I don't see many of the tiny two spot Ladybirds around the garden.
This one made an appearance yesterday:
A real gardeners' friend as they and their larvae eat copious numbers of aphids such as greenfly. They over Winter in buildings or trees and start looking for a mate in the Spring.
I set up the Toshiba X-Sports camera right next to the hanging bird table to try recoding some of the visitors. It wasn't a good day for WiFi reception. The picture on the iPod kept freezing. Part of the problem could be to do with the nature of high frequency transmissions and the way I had previously mounted the camera on the tripod. The metal upright was between the camera and the iPod which can cut down the signal strength.
I fiddled around for some time and eventually cobbled together several of the supplied mountings with a clamp I already had to come up with a mount which put the camera a short distance away from the metal pole.
This wasn't a complete cure so I'm not sure whether it is a bug in the iOS app as even when the monitored picture had frozen it would still record OK. Maybe the camera goes on some sort of standby though I hadn't notice that the other day.
Anyway here is one of the captures
There she was, a female Blackbird, trying to stuff as many sunflower hearts as she could get in her beak when along comes a Robin who is determined it is its turn on the hanging bird table:
I cut down the quality of the recording by setting the camera to 720P in case the reduced processing time would help with the WiFi problems, it didn't but did save space on the microSD card. The quality looks fine so I will probably stick with that setting.
Not a brilliant day on Wednesday, overcast with showers from time to time. I decided to mount the X-Sports camera in its waterproof case to see what the picture quality was like:
First I tried it next to the pond waterfall but while I was watching no bird went anywhere near it. Later I moved the camera to stand next to the bird bath:
Having switched on the camera's WiFi signal I could control it with the iPod Touch in the kitchen:
When the camera was next to the waterfall it was out of range of the kitchen but it was possible to pick up the signal from the Summer House so somewhere between the two is the limit for a decent signal.
I only managed to get a few clips of visiting Blackbirds but it did show me that the picture quality was good with the camera enclosed behind what I assume is acrylic. It also survived a short sharp hail shower:
The original was shot at 1080P, 25fps. The finished video was reduced to 720P to keep the file size down for uploading. Having WiFi on uses more power so the battery life seems to be somewhere around 70 - 90 minutes. At the moment the batteries are charged while in the camera but I have ordered a charger with comes with a couple of extra batteries.
The one thing I have to take into account is a delay of 1 or 2 seconds between touching the record button on the iPod and the recording starting.
