Part of the early morning routine of late has been to 'check the robin chicks'. They were getting quite big, and looked to be nearing fledging.... However, Saturday morning's camera view looked like this....
Something has moved the camera (08:13, Sat 7 May in the above screenshot). As the three chicks have grown there has been a bit of camera jostling going on, but these have only been nudges, so a dramatic shift of perspective cant have been due to the chicks or adult birds. For info, the above view is pointing out of the hole the adults have been feeding the chicks through, with the nest being a 90 degree rotation to the left.... the obvious question is '...are the chicks still there?
All motion is captured for this nest, we can 'rewind' and capture the 'event'.... so here it is:
Some screen captures identify the culprit....
Top: ?black and white hair
Middle: Looks suspiciously like a cat's paw poking through the entrance hole
Bottom: Is that a whisker?
Culprit = Cattus domesticus
So we immediately assumed that our robin chicks had met a furry end, even after my best attempts to cat proof the nest site, however if we go back to the previous evening, there are no chicks... so did the cat find an empty nest site?
Have the chicks flown the nest??
A collective sigh of relief all round as it turns out that the last two Robin chicks fledged at approx 5pm the previous day, so had a narrow escape.
Chick 2 fledges
Chick 3 gone a few minutes later
The first chick fledged a full 24 hrs before chick 2+3 , however the adults kept up the feeding on the nest until approx 1 hr before the other two fledged.
Interestingly within a few hours of the nest being vacated... we spotted someone else possibly looking for a home.....
I recently went looking for an old nest box had fallen from its tree. A bit of poking about in the undergrowth located it... plus a pair of nesting robins, sitting on eggs.
So we have a robin nesting on the ground in a broken old nest box, and quite vulnerable in my opinion. In an effort to make it a bit more robust I've put some temporary 'anti-cat' protection around it. I also popped a webcam in (operation of approx 1 minute). I'm a bit concerned the nest is still fairly vulnerable, but at least I've warned the kids off that bit of the garden, explaining that to the dog was a bit trickier. Some more robust anti-cat measures will go up over the Bank Holiday weekend... any way here she/he is:
29/04/17: 9 days old
We definitely have three chicks. I came across this interesting RSPB information page on the nesting habits of robins. Three would seem to be a relatively small clutch size, but our lot seem to have read the manual since eyes started opening on about day 5. All have their eyes open now (when they're not sleeping). Until yesterday, one parents sat on the chicks with the other one feeding, but that has stopped now, presumably they're both busy collecting food. Since the parents dash in and out to feed, its difficult to see what they're feeding, but we've definitely graduated from spiders to big fate white things (cant tell what they are).
1) Day 7 feeding
2) Day 9 feeding, and removal of faecal sac
03/05/17: 13 days old
Looking a bit more like proper birds now. Are starting to take an interest in their surroundings, eg picking off insects that wander too close to the nest. Adults feeding approx every 4 minutes.
Day 8
Day 9
Day 13
The dramatic end to this nest is described in this post
How this was setup....
My rough-and ready solution to documenting this is a LifeCam studio webcam (higher res/better low light than its LifeCam Cinema sibling). This camera has up to now been monitoring the rabbit shed, so it was simple to move it. Handily, the nest box is adjacent to the shed with power and network access (who dosen't?). A quick network cable run to a 'stand-by' raspberry Pi + PoE splitter meant that I could house the bulk away from 'Robbie' the Robin (name was not my choice), to minimise any disturbance. Video capture is using iCatcher console CCTV software
Robin nesting in old,. broken nest box
The Robin box is behind the upturned pot (enlarged on inset). Electronics are housed in the box attached to the pergola (another re-purposed bird box). I've done a bit of waterproofing with electric insulation tape to protect the webcam . The original entrance hole is facing to the right (not used), with robin access through some other animal-caused damage to the lid region.
SO, fingers crossed, with a bit of help this family will make it through. Of concern is all the cats, badgers, rats and mice that I've filmed on my trail camera in this exact spot...
Techy bits
Motion jpeg streaming from a compatible usb webcam guide here via a raspberry pi.
This uses an original Type B raspberry Pi. I had to fix the focus as it wants to focus just behind the bird's head, which isn't very helpful
Code to fix the focus on Raspberry Pi.. Enter the following in a terminal window
sudo apt-get install uvcdynctrl # install package to control USB webcam
uvcdynctrl -v -d video0 --set='Focus, Auto' 0 # turn autofocus OFF
uvcdynctrl -v -d video0 --set='Focus (absolute)' 35 # fixed focus position
...more on controlling auto focus of usb webcams here
The Pi gets its power via power over ethernet (PoE) to my house (via shed). Video stream is captured at iCatcher console on a PC as follows: On new camera setup, select 'Network Device', and enter 'Source' as follows, replacing xxx.xxx.x.xx:yyyy with the IP address and port of the Raspberry pi in the custom feeds dialogue box:
mjpg://xxx.xxx.x.xx:yyyy/?action=stream
I get approx 10fps at 1280x1080, which isn't bad and makes for some some nice screen grabs. 20 fps at 800x600 is also possible, but I've opted for higher res, lower framerate.
So why not use a Raspberry pi camera module? Several reasons...
This was quick to do with minimal disturbance as I could locate the Pi far away from the nest. Rasp Pi camera cables are not very long, and more fragile than a standard USB cable.. I can access the Raspberry Pi + its power gubbins without going too near the nest.
The low light performance of the PiCamera is AWFUL. I have recently installed one of the new v2 camera modules in a custom designed box with its own lighting rig (incidentally is just above this old broken, occupied box!), and have struggled with illumination.
Pi Camera module is not robust, and likes to fry itself it you handle it without taking extreme care to earth yourself first.
raspI camera has its plus points, and is good in an enclosed, pre-planned situation. Its also cheaper than this webcam (off the shelf.. this webcam was an ebay bargain)
So fingers crossed we make it to the weekend and I can properly fence it off, in the meantime we're watching with interest...
Post Easter weekend...
While not especially pretty, the robins don't seem to mind this attempt to put off the local fox/cat/badger population
Livestream setup
I'm running ffmpeg on a second Pi which takes the video stream from the Pi attached to the pergola in the pic above, adds in a dummy audio stream to play nicely with YouTube, flips the image (camera is upside down), and reduces the width to 720 (scaled) and streams in appropriate format to YouTube. I've anonymised it by removing its local IP address and my YouTube streaming ID. The second Pi wasn't doing much anyway, and lives in a currently vacant birdbox.
I'll expand on this in a bit more detail in a separate post, but the command is as follows:
