I had almost given up on nesting this year after some promising early interest in the double camera box fizzled out. BUT all is not lost!...
Great Tit checking out double camera box
Side camera footage, female Great tit:
We had some nesting material brought in (this one has sound)
But that was about it for this box...
BUT all is not lost!
The BirchLog Box that I put up a week ago started off this morning like this:
BirchLog Box, Infra-red illuminated, blue tit. Clay blob on the floor, 8:30 am
The thing that looks a bit like a slug on the floor is a piece of air-drying clay which was supposed to help support the plywood roof, I used hot-glue in the end and didn't bother removing the clay, a piece fell out and seen here littering the floor. I had thought to retrieve it, but in the end the blue tits cleared it out themselves.
By the end of the day, the box looks like this:
BirchLog box, visible light-illuminated, 6:30 pm
The blue tits have had a very busy day 1. I got this nice pic of one on its way on:
Blue tit on its way into BirchLog box
Here are a couple of video clips of today's nest building efforts:
The bird box has been recently used as an overnight roost for a blue tit. On a couple of occasions we've had two in there. Today was a little different since tit 1 didn't appreciate tit 2 in the same space, as can be seen in the following clip:
It's interesting that in addition to feet and beaks being used as offensive weapons, there are a couple of hooks using a wing...
Right hook
The posturing at the beginning is also interesting:
I recently acquired a new oven that is described as 'Self-cleaning'. Looks like my bird box is too (sort of). I've seen a lot of flies in the nest box recently. Looks like someone else has noticed that too.....
Pay attention to the fly at the top right corner of the box....
The 2014 bird box has a Raspberry Pi + Microsoft lifecam cinema usb webcam in
it that has been faultlessly streaming video since being setup. I had to switch all cameras off over the Summer & Autumn for building work, and on reactivating them... I have discovered a design flaw.
My design has a glass partition between camera / electronics and area for the birds. Over the Summer this has got filthy - I blame my builders! The dirt means that the camera now 'sees' the window and focuses on it rather than any in-box activity. An example from last week (Jan 6 2016), shows the problem:
While I don't resent the odd insect, I don't want this sort of thing:
There is an obvious solution - CLEAN THE GLASS!
...which would be great if I could locate the keys for my securely locked ladder :(
Plan B is to turn the auto focus OFF and fix the focus to a specific focal distance
Introducing uvcdynctrl
This is a handy application that gives control over your webcam's settings. Apparently the one I'm using (Microsoft Lifecam cinema) is notorious for a skittish auto focus.
Since I'm running this on a Raspberry pi, to install do:
sudo apt-get install uvcdynctrl
To list the controls available to you do:
uvcdynctrl -c
I get the following (output depends on webcam model): xx@xx ~ $ uvcdynctrl -c
Listing available controls for device video0: Brightness Contrast Saturation White Balance Temperature, Auto Power Line Frequency White Balance Temperature Sharpness Backlight Compensation Exposure, Auto Exposure (Absolute) Pan (Absolute) Tilt (Absolute) Focus (absolute) Focus, Auto Zoom, Absolute
Now, obviously I cant control all of these, there's no pan and tilt controls available to me, however I can change the autofocus behaviour.
To turn OFF that pesky autofocus:
uvcdynctrl -v -d video0 --set='Focus, Auto' 0
Auto focus is OFF... just need to manually set the auto focus until it's in the correct place:
The number at the end is the focal distance - just needs playing with to hit the correct focal point
You can 'get' i.e., query what the focus setting is at as follows:
uvcdynctrl -d video0 -g "Focus (absolute)"
So auto focus is off for now... just need to find my keys /access ladder, clean/remove the separating glass and I can sort it properly, then switch auto focus back on with:
