Birdy Bistro Fully Booked

For the past few years there has been a steady trickle of birds visiting the various feeder I have tried in different arrangements in the back garden. Just recently it has become pure bedlam. Yesterday morning I gave up counting Goldfinches when I reached twenty four. Add to that several Greenfinches, Chaffinches and numerous House Sparrows and there is chaos when they all decide to book a seat at the Birdy Bistro at the same time.

Sometimes several will queue waiting their opportunity.



Others get impatient and prefer bully boy tactics.



I usually film through the kitchen window and my camcorder has one failing, no way to add an external microphone to pick up the sound from outdoors. A recent question from Shirl prompted me to wake up my remaining grey cell and find a solution.  After scrabbling through my various junk boxes looking for a way to get a microphone outside I remembered I had an old baby monitor which I usually use to monitor the front door bell with the receiver in the shed so I can hear if I have a visitor.

After a bit of thought I took the baby monitor apart, filed a small hole in the side and moved the microphone outside the case. This now sits in a hole in the end of the shed not far from the feeders. It is fairly well protected from the elements as the wall of the shed is one inch thick and on the outside a sloping solar panel and the roof overhang keep off the rain and some of the wind.

The baby monitor transmitter in position with the microphone (the black bit just on the right) in the hole.



The receiver is in the kitchen about six feet from the camcorder. Results are not perfect. It is an old unit and the frequency it used is now allocated to other things so I get a bit of interference but here is a sample of the unit in use. Not much sound to begin with but as things hot up at the Bistro it gets noisier for a while.



 I think that now conveys a better impression of what it is like here three times a day. Next thing is to get hold of a modern digital version which should eliminate any interference.

I have one small tree, grafted on dwarf rooting stock, which is a treat in Spring and Autumn. In Spring it is a mass of flowers which appear before the leaves. In the Autumn the leaves turn from green to red. Yesterday I took two series of photographs. The first is in daylight and the second at night by flash.





Finally (sighs of relief all round) we spotted this little frog during our afternoon perambulation. The photo was taken with my mobile phone and fortunately little froggy let me get the phone within a few inches for a nice clear portrait.

Friday at the Flicks

Victor Meldrew mode - "I don't believe it!" This is my second attempt at this post. All done once with the copies of the video clips being uploaded to Flickr. When I posted it and checked things Flickr had made a complete mess of all the clips with missing frames and jerky movement. Hopefully that will make this week's three disasters over and done with. Copies are now on YouTube - fingers crossed.

No new subjects but new clips so on with the show......

Most days I hear a Magpie chuntering away in a tree. I often wonder whether this is the nearest they get to a song or whether it is their equivalent of Victor Meldrew, always complaining about something. (This is the only clip with sound today)



Here a Sparrow is pretending to be disguised as a Goldfinch so it can find a feeding space.



If a Goldfinch can't find space at the feeders the only thing left is to glean any seed dropped by the more fortunate ones.



Finally another opportunity arose to film the Dunnock as it searched the wooden beams which support the feeders then moved to the top of the bird table and ended up sliding off when it lost its grip on the plastic roof.



 Have a good weekend everyone and don't get blown over by the windy weather forecast for Saturday.

All's Well That Ends Well

First a very big thank you for all the messages of support over the past day or so. They have helped a lot on keeping me going.

When I checked my YouTube account at 7.30 this morning the old video thumbnails were still missing but another look a few minutes ago showed that they had been restored. It must have been the length of time their 'improvements' and recent upgrade has taken to catch up with everything. It would have helped things if their system hadn't sent messages that accounts had been permanently disabled which was a bit of a shock to my system to say the least. One saying it was temporarily unavailable would have been better wording.

Just a couple of piccies today. Normally I dead head all of my flowers. For some reason this year I missed the Flag Irises which went on to produce a profusion of seed pods. As the stems collapsed under the weight of seeds many were partly eaten by slugs like the first picture but the seeds were untouched and look as though they are ripening anyway. The uneaten ones are just beginning to split open normally. What a lovely brilliant orange the seeds are.



Many thanks to Chris Rose who pointed out - Your photo is of the seed pod of the Stinking or Beefsteak Iris (so called because its crushed leaves are meant to have that sort of smell ...) which is Iris foetidissima. It is nice when visitors take the time to let me know when I have misidentified something - which can happen frequently.

Curioser and Curioser

Just had an email purporting to come from YouTube saying an attempt had been made to change my password. Out of curiosity I tried to log in and it worked. Needless to say I did not use any links in the email - I am far too wary to do that. All the videos are there but none of the thumbnails exist. People looking at my blog pages with YouTube videos will just see the title of the video and a drawing of a camcorder but clicking on the play arrow seems to work. Maybe Adrian was right when he mentioned hacking as a possibility.

Let's hope they stay available which will save me weeks of work.

Thanks for all the encouragement from those who commented on my last post.

Another curiosity - Honey didn't arrive until after 2 a.m. She either overslept or found food elsewhere. She didn't eat as much here as she usually does. As a test I have successfully uploaded this to my YouTube account. Now we will see how long it stays in view!

YouTube pulled my account

All my nature videos have disappeared. I log in this morning to find my YouTube account has been permanently disabled. The only videos I had uploaded were the home made nature clips used on this blog. No music was used so there were no copyright issues. No sex, no violence apart from a few birds arguing. All filmed by me using my own equipment in my own back garden.

To say the least I am gutted and absolutely disgusted. No communication from YouTube just months of work vaporised.  Thanks a bunch YouTube for wrecking my blog for no good reason.


Just how does it look when each video now comes up with the caption 'removed for terms of use violation'? As far as I can see this casts a shadow on my reputation. What can one do though with large anonymous organisations which seems to have no route for questioning or appealing against their actions?


For the moment this has killed my enthusiasm in maintaining this blog. All that hard work down the drain. A blog which now looks a complete mess to any visitors. Quite honestly I could sit down and weep.


I have managed to get some of the latest on to Flickr but looking back there are another 85 to do to get my blog back as it was before YouTube behaved in such a high handed manner.  That will take quite a while!  Many will have to be reworked as Flickr has a 90 second limit on the length of video clips.





John.

Goldfinch Mayhem

It used to be so peaceful when I had just two Goldfinches visit. They sat calm and prim, one each side of the small feeder. It has become a different story as their numbers have increased. Not long ago I added a larger feeder for them and all was reasonably peaceful.

This morning when I took the cameras to the kitchen I counted at least twenty Goldfinches, most on the feeders, some on the lawn and a few at the bird bath. There are not enough perches for so many visitors and it is pure mayhem as they squabble to find a place to eat.





Even the other birds, like this male Chaffinch, are finding it difficult to get a look in as the Goldfinches spread over most of the feeders.



Unfortunately the sound of them squabbling wasn't captured on the video clips as the back door was shut and the one facility lacking from my camcorder is the ability to plug in an external microphone. The video is a normal speed .....



One Goldfinch had the answer to the lack of perch space - hang upside down ....



Several Goldfinches bided their time by taking a drink from the bird bath.



I think I will have to make a trip to the local garden centre and buy another thistle seed feeder. It is a good job I have a delivery of seed coming today as the feeders are being emptied at an alarming rate.

I have read that Goldfinches can congregate in flocks of up to one hundred over the Winter months but I think I will be more than satisfied with twenty or so!

The Spider and the Ladybird

While I was wandering round my pond with camera in hand hoping to spot a dragonfly I had seen earlier I spied a ladybird flying across the pond. I was pondering the possibility of taking a photo of it in flight when it suddenly came to a halt, caught up in one of the many spider webs.

I watched for a while to see if it would break free while the spider sat patiently in the middle of its web. There was no escape as the ladybird was stuck fast and the spider eventually approached its prey very cautiously. Once the spider was next to the ladybird it attached many silk threads and used its legs to spin it round at quite a fast rate, all the time encapsulating the ladybird in a silk cocoon. When the spider was satisfied that its next meal was going nowhere it ambled back to the centre of the web.

At one stage I contemplated fetching the camcorder to show how deftly the spider could spin its prey round but that would have meant missing most of the action so I made do with a series of still shots. I was surprised how many threads the spider was producing at once. One of the photos, unfortunately not in focus, showed about ten threads all being spun at the same time.



Not the nicest of things I have photographed but then nature isn't always nice and cuddly and all creatures have to eat.