Macro on Monday - Guess What + Nest Box Update

No fooling people last Monday with Adrian, Jan, Keith, Frank, Glo and Wilma each deserving a gold star for the correct identification of an apple pip / seed. What surprised me was how hairy it looked close up.

 

Let's see how well you folk get on with this week's puzzle picture.



Clue: No use putting the chip pan on..

No prizes. Just for fun.


NEST BOX UPDATE

The Great Tit continues to use the box as a roost every night. Several visits are made during the day and occasionally her partner joins her inside for very brief periods. Things are definitely looking up for it being a nesting site in the Spring.

A snapshot from the video camera in the roof of the box.

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch (UK)

This weekend is the time for the annual January RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. The idea being to spend an hour observing and counting the birds which visit your garden or local park. Full information HERE on the RSPB web site.

This time I decided to undertake my garden bird count earlier in the day. Usually I count them somewhere between mid morning and mid afternoon. Today I chose a start time of 8.30 a.m. The aim is to count the maximum number of each species which actually land in the garden (ground, feeders, bird table, etc.) at any one time .

Results:

Balackbird   18

Starling      6

Chaffinch     5

Rook          3

House Sparrow 2

Wood Pigeon   2

Tree Sparrow  1

Goldfinch     1

Blue Tit      1

Great Tit     1

Dunnock       1

Collared Dove 1

Jackdaw       1

Sparrowhawk   1

Three times while I was watching all the birds vanished in the blink of an eyelid so I guessed there was a raptor about. On the third occasion I saw it swoop low over the lawn and land on the fruit cage - unfortunately it didn't stay long enough to get it in focus with the camcorder. For the first time here it was a male Sparrowhawk. I usually see a female.

Friday at the Flicks - Amorous Wood Pigeon, Pair of Stock Doves

There hardly seems to be any time of year when the Wood Pigeons and Collared Doves don't think about breeding.



On cold days recently there has often been a solitary Stock Dove and very occasionally a pair visiting the garden.



RSPB BIG GARDEN BIRDWATCH
Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you and don't forget that this weekend is  RSPB  Big Garden Birdwatch time in the UK. Can you spare an hour any time over the weekend to count the bird visitors to your garden or other area? If so visit the  RSPB web site for details.

Getting Ready for Spring

With the temperature reaching the heady height of 10.5C yesterday I spent a little time tidying up in the garden and Bobby managed to sprawl out on the grass for an hour or so. At the same time I was on the lookout for things to practice my macro photography.

On checking the fruit cage I could see buds on the blackcurrant bushes were showing signs of life. Actual size about 8mm. 25 photos stacked using CombineZP.



Also showing were lots of buds on my large Leylandii tree.
Actual bud size about 7mm. 12 photos stacked using CombineZP.



By the end of the day we were back to gloomy wet weather and it was no better this morning on our perambulations. It looks as though we are going to be back to frosty weather soon but it was great to have one day of pleasant weather and to breathe in some fresh air.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Congratulations to the four visitors who made a correct identification of last week's puzzle picture.

  

Gold stars for Keith, Glo, Matron and Wilma who identified it as moss. Like Matron I have plenty of it growing in my lawn. At least the Blackbirds have cleared it out from round the edges.

Now for the new photo - taken through the microscope. I'll tell you now it is not a coconut.
Strong lighting made it appear brighter than it really is.



Clue: When it's grown up it may help keep the doctor away.

No prizes - just for fun.

Friday at the Flicks - Blue Tit Drinking

Just the one video this week. It has been more than a bit on the dull side for much in the way of photography recently. When I first spotted this Blue Tit I wondered whether it had been in a scrap. Then I realised its downy feathers were still fluffed out as it was early morning and it had probably just woken up.



 Sometimes I wish I had a camcorder which could film in very low light levels. As this morning was the first well below freezing for a while there were more Blackbirds milling round the lawn than ever at 7.30 a.m.. I gave up counting at forty. The previous few mornings the numbers had dropped to about a dozen.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Heath Robinson Meets Heather

In general I've been disappointed with the quality of some, many really, of the stacked macro photos I've taken. The main difficulty being changing the focus by minute amounts between shots. Last week I spotted an article on the DIYPhotography web site which explained a system for automatically moving the photographic subject for each shot. I though to myself I could do something like that so I have been in Heath Robinson mode for the past three days and came up with this:



Canon 350D, cheap Chinese bellows, s/h Super Takumar 1:2 55mm lens.
On the piece of wood:
Top
Stripped computer DVD player keeping the stepper motor and laser carrier. (Sprig of Heather mounted in pink Blu Tack) On the right - relay to fire the camera.
Bottom
Breadboard with Arduino Nano (left) pulsing a stepper motor driver (centre) and the camera relay.
On the right the 5V regulated power supply.

This photo of one heather flower is built from 59 stacked photos processed with CombineZP.



As I have the Arduino Nano programmed at the moment it moves the subject one step, waits for vibration to settle, fires the camera, waits one second and then repeats the process. This it does 25 or 50 times depending on the position of one of the switches. If more photos are needed I push the reset button to carry the process on again. On my calculation each step is 0.15mm.

This time I am pleased with the result though it takes CombineZP quite a while to process all the shots - worth the wait though.

LATER:

After thinking about increasing the sharpness of the resulting stacked photo I took a series in RAW. CombineZP doesn't accept RAW so I converted them all to BMP which CombineZP can work with. It was much faster processing the 69 shots in this stack and with a bit of processing in PaintshopPro to add  more contrast this was the result: Full frame with no cropping. I also increased the time from moving the subject to taking the shot to 1.5 seconds to allow vibrations to settle down.



I think I will be satisfied with that, for now.