The nesting birds seem to disappear when the weather is cold and windy. I finally had proof yesterday that the bluebirds have not abandoned the neighborhood, but I got just as many images of the swallows landing at the old box. But the first image here is a transient sparrow and a dramatic sky. Images taken with Gardepro T5CF #14.
I had a discussion with a friend about grosbeaks yesterday. Not usually a topic that comes up in casual conversation. Anyway, my observation was I hadn't seen any grosbeaks at the feeders although others in the area have been reporting them. I have two candidates from yesterday that I'm not sure about. I don't think either matches what I have in my bird book, although both have big heavy bills. I think the second one might be a grouse, but once again, it doesn't match up well with anything in the book. The third image here is a rose-breasted grosbeak from Massachusetts, 2006. The fourth and fifth images are a crow, and the sixth image of the magpie is the best DSLR shot I got today after moving the Gardepro back to nest box duty. I haven't checked those images yet but the swallows were flitting around in that area.
The G6 image from 2006 was taken through my Televue 85 telescope. I have a 2-inch telescope eyepiece that attaches directly to the G6, which I still have and is in operational condition. It was an interesting camera for its time and had some features you don't see any more, like an included wireless remote and built-in 3-stop ND filter. I experimented with the ND setting in New York City back in 2011. In addition to the telescope eyepiece, also have a wide angle attachment which fits only the G6. Every once in a while I get the G6 out and play with it, but my S95 (which is vintage 2011) has better image quality and fits in my pocket.
We had a winter storm on May 23 with about three inches of heavy, wet snow. Today, two days later, it hasn't all melted yet. I'm probably going to buy flowers today, but it will be for containers that can be brought into the garage if more snow threatens in June. My consolation is, when California is a 150-degree desert due to climate change, the weather here might be decent.
The first image shows the height of the storm and is more evidence why I've never been a huge fan of the Browning Strike Force HD Pro model even though I have two of them (#5 and #6). In snow, the center is reddish and the edges are bluish. This is not something recent, it also shows in one of my better moose images from 2017, although I spent some time on that image to balance it out. This one, I spent a minute on it but it is still obvious. After that are three images from yesterday and one from today.
I saw a bluebird and multiple swallows this morning, so it is time to redeploy the Gardepro and see who is claiming the boxes.
As I said yesterday, the goldfinches have arrived. And they have found the birdbath. One problem with the wide-angle close-focus Gardepro is a tiny bird like a goldfinch doesn't fill much of the screen. It is only 16 inches from the camera to the center of the rock, and only 25 inches to where the bird is perched. Maybe when the weather settles down a bit (Friday?), I'll put a less-wide DSLR motion trigger on the birdbath and move the Gardepro T5CF #14 back to one of the nest boxes.
This blog and my web site are useful from year to year for recalling the dates when various critters show up the spring. Today I saw the first goldfinches of the season, and two days ago I saw my first hummingbird. No images of those two so far as the weather has been cool and cloudy, and there may be snow tonight, maybe a lot up in the mountains. Last year I didn't get any images of those two until mid-June. Both the bluebirds and swallows have been absent the past few days with the high wind, so we'll see if either or both return soon.
After I moved the closeup camera from the nest boxes to the bird bath, I got a few magpie images right away but not much since. A small herd of four deer has returned to the neighborhood after being absent most of the winter. I think one of the deer is the buck with the lopsided antlers that has been a visitor the past two years. I had some trailcam images last year that suggest this deer is also blind or impaired in his right eye, the same side as the stunted antler. In this image, it appears the antler bud is smaller on the right, and the right eye is less glossy if you look closely. If this is the same deer, being a non-trophy buck with weird antlers probably contributes to his survival during hunting season.
Just around the corner from Browning #5 is the bird bath with Gardepro T5CF #14. Obviously the best focus is on the big rock, but the deer wandered past in the background. As I have mentioned before, the color is usually different between two cameras of different brands, or even the same camera at different types of the day, and I'm not going to obsess with fixing it. I did adjust the white balance on the Browning to make the twilight less blue but didn't attempt to match the Gardepro. All three of these images were taken after 8 pm.
The magpies seem the most interested in the birdbath even though there are at least a dozen blackbirds and some other brown birds that go to the nearby sunflower seed feeder. These are from today. Images taken with the Gardepro T5CF #14.
Maybe The Internet will eventually be right and the swallows and bluebirds will tolerate each other as neighbors. But for now, the swallows seem to be getting ready to take both nest boxes, contrary to what The Internet says. So rather than continuing to get a bunch of swallow images, I have moved the new Gardepro T5CF #14 trailcam to one of the birdbaths. I expect the clientele will include blackbirds, crows, and various LBBs (little brown birds aka sparrows). Maybe the goldfinches will show up at some point when summer arrives, i.e. mid-June. Here is one of those blackbirds resting on the old nest box. They are voracious eaters of the sunflower seeds that I put in two of the feeders. The birdbath is just to the right of the shed in the background.
Below that are two of the first few images from the new location, a magpie getting a drink. The images are about an hour apart, which is why the lighting is different.
At the new nest box, it has been 95% swallows the past four days and they are bringing in nesting material. I'm going to move the camera back to the old box to see if the bluebirds are there. Images taken with the Gardepro T5CF #14.
I set up the camera on the new nest box to see how much activity it is getting. It looked like the swallows were moving into the new box...then the bluebirds showed up. The first two images are from this morning at the new box, the third image is from two days ago at the old box.
It seems as though there are four swallows and two bluebirds, and the swallows at times seem intent on driving away any other birds in the yard. They even seem to want to dive bomb me when I am out there swapping memory cards. I was thinking about taking my tennis racket with me, but that would be wrong.... If they were starlings I could swat away, but swallows are native birds. Images taken with the Gardepro T5CF #14.
Yesterday we probably had our worse winter storm of the season. We got a little bit of wet snow, but the nasty part was the wind. We don't get hurricanes in Montana, so they say, but the wind picked up our garbage can and dropped it in our neighbor's yard. And it knocked over the trailcam monitoring the nest box. Before it tipped over, it got a couple shots of swallows trying to horn in on the work the bluebirds have done. The bluebirds seem to disappear when the weather is bad, so we'll see if they return in a day or two. They were last seen in the early morning on the 5th. The hope still is the bluebirds get this box and the swallows take the new box 30 feet away.
Also seen, the first appearance of the neighborhood deer on this camera. I don't know what the one found interesting about the box.
If I was really anal, I would edit these images so the horizon is level and the colors are the same. But there are some variations and I'm not going to worry about it. Also, I'm not using the Gardepro T5CF #14 info strip on these images because I deskew and crop these very wide images, but I did type in my own date stamp. Whether I'll keep doing that, I don't know.
Just one image from today from the Gardepro T5CF #14. It's cold and blustery with a few snowflakes in the air. It seems like the birds are more active when the weather is better.
The bluebirds are in full-scale nest building and the swallows are nowhere to be seen. I haven't seen them at the other nest box, but blog entries from last year indicate they did their takeover last year in the middle of May. Here's a bunch of images from today. Rather than pick a few I'm just posting them all. I lowered the camera a bit to shoot the birds against the sky. Next I'll put the camera on the other side to get the mountains as the background, but the risk of that is it is shooting into the sun for much of the day. Images taken with the Gardepro T5CF #14.
