Bluebird

The male bluebird has made another appearance. I wonder if he will bring his brood when they fledge. The first full year we were here, I thought the bluebirds were nesting in the box and one day was happy to see three little grayish-blue bluebirds hopping around. That was July 18, 2021. I read somewhere that cleaning the box might encourage them to breed again the same year, but when I opened the box I found nothing. No nest. Bluebirds did nest there in 2022. Last year they were chased away by the swallows, but made a few visits after the swallows fledged. The same thing might be happening this year.

The swallows are still around, but are not as territorial as they were in May when they were trying to drive everything away, not just the nesting competitor bluebirds but also the big magpies and crows. I don't remember seeing little fledglings last year. Once they leave the nest, I think they are gone from the area.

After a few windy days just letting the Gardepro T5CF #14 handle everything, I put out the Canon 5D Mark III #8 with the 100-400mm zoom, this time zoomed out to 100mm and set closer to the bath. To avoid the camera noise scaring the birds, it is set on single shot. I would love to set the old 1D right next to the bath with a wide angle lens and have it do a 12-shot burst in less than two seconds, but that sounds like a machine gun being fired. Everything flees by frame 3. I do have my spouse's R10 mirrorless camera which might be a solution, but I need to wrap it up so it doesn't get guano on it or I would never hear the end of it.

I had a lot of images to go through since last night because a robin plopped down right in front of the camera and stood/sat there for 15 minutes. Which doesn't sound that long, but it was long enought to fire off 900 images. That's one image per second. Here's one.

And the obligatory flicker, standing tall.

Wind

It has been so windy the past few days I did not put out a motion trigger DSLR. But the Gardepro T5CF #14 continued to collect images of flickers and others. The first couple images are the female flicker. If I could get something similar on DSLR, I would probably declare victory at the small birdbath and move on to something else for the rest of the summer.

Next we have an itinerant bluebird, a thirsty magpie, and two images of a robin which triggered at the same time. The second robin image was taken with the Reconyx #2 and shows how close the Gardepro is to the birdbath. The t-post adapter mounted on a tomato stake seems to be my best support option for the Gardepro. It gets lower than my cheap tripods, and is sturdier than the telescoping spike. The adapter costs $16 on Amazon now, but a 4-pack is "only" $41. I probably could use two more, so may as well just get the 4-pack.

Hopefully I will get the Reconyx back out in the woods this week. More evidence that the motion trigger on the Reconyx is not very sensitive to birds, this is the only time in the past couple days that the Reconyx triggered at the same time as the Gardepro, which triggered about 250 times. A lot of those were sparrows, but there were plenty of big birds like the magpie and flicker.

Sensitivity

I have known for a long time that the Reconyx cameras, particularly Reconyx #2, are less sensitive than the Brownings. Out in the woods, I routinely get at least 10 times more triggers on the Brownings. Often these are squirrels running around, so maybe it is just as well that I don't have the Reconyx filling up with those images. I probably won't get #2 back into the woods until next week, so for now it is on the back fence pointing toward the small birdbath. Last night, it triggered bursts only three times, versus 130 times for the Browning #11. And they both got exactly nothing.

The Gardepro T5CF #14, sitting just a few feet from the Reconyx, also triggered more than 100 times since last evening. This morning it caught this fawn running north, running right past the Reconyx, which did not trigger. I know the Reconyx works because it took 12 images of me approaching it to retrieve the card. I'm not as fast as a deer or as small as a squirrel, so I'm an easy target.

The blackbird image was snapped as the lawn sprinklers were going, so that's why there is water on the lens. And the magpie got caught slurping.

Blackbird

I have my older Reconyx camera home for a few days, fitting it out with new batteries and fiddling with the software settings. Seeing it on my desk, I had forgotten how big it is. In comparison to the newest Browning, it is gigantic. And it takes 12 "AA" batteries. (The Brownings take only six.) The Reconyx doesn't go through them very fast, but my last purchase of eight lithium batteries was $19, so it costs nearly $30 to replace 12. I went through my accumulated lithiums with two different battery testers and came up with 12 that I hope will be good through the end of the year.

But the images here are from the Gardepro T5CF #14. The red-winged blackbirds are one of the regular customers at the platform feeder scarfing down sunflower seeds, but for some reason they rarely visit the small birdbath just a few feet away. Today we finally got some blackbird action. Trying to process these images in Photoshop just reminds me that trail cameras are better at scouting than they are at making images. I find the easiest way to make all the color and contrast adjustments at once is to bring up the camera RAW filter. With a Canon RAW file, sliding the Shadows slider to the right brings detail out of dark areas. With a JPG file shot by the Gardepro, it reveals mud. With those limitations in mind, here are two images of a blackbird, a magpie, robin, sparrow, and the obligatory flicker on a mostly gray day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

I set up the Canon 5D Mark III #8 with the 500mm lens on motion trigger in an attempt to get a better image of the female flicker, and got robins instead. The Gardepro T5CF #14 was on the small birdbath yesterday and early this morning, then I switched it to the big birdbath when I set out the 500mm. One little surprise was the appearance of a bluebird. Last year I recall they started coming around regularly again after the swallows fledged. I wish they would just take the spare nest box instead of knuckling under to the swallows.

The female flicker did not show up on either #8 or #14, just the male on trailcam. And there was the usual assortment of other stuff. And a couple of very bright half rainbows.

Red robin, Canon 5D Mark III #8

Bluebird, Gardepro T5CF #14

Flicker, Gardepro T5CF #14

Magpies, Gardepro T5CF #14

Magpie, Gardepro T5CF #14

Rainbow, M100

Rainbow, M100

Bears

The new camera has been deployed in the woods. In the three weeks since I last checked, a familiar family of three bears came through twice. I know they are the same bears that rolled through last July because one of them is cinnamon colored. I thought it was interesting how the cinnamon bear appeared in the infrared image versus his/her mama and sibling.

The image of the deer is the last one out in the woods on Browning #11. It has been replaced by the newest Browning #15 and will be relegated to the back fence at home.

I brought Reconyx #2 home because the batteries were dead and it could use a cleanup. It has been at the Snow Creek footbridge, which is falling apart. Last time I was there, the cables on one side had come loose. Since then, one of the major support posts has snapped, complicating any repair efforts significantly. I am told it is not an official National Forest Service structure and it doesn't actually go anywhere, so I'm guessing it may never be fixed. In place of #2, I left Browning #5. I was going to put #5 on the back side of the tree with #15, but plans change. When #2 is ready to go, I'm not sure whether to put it back in the same location. I have gotten bears and coyotes there, but with the bridge about to collapse I'm not sure they will continue to come through. I have something in mind south of #7, but I've never found a good tree in that area so I would have to use the t-post adapter and a tomato stake.

Cinnamon, Reconyx #7

Sibling and mama, Reconyx #7

Cinnamon in infrared, Reconyx #7

Mama, Reconyx #7

Sibling, Reconyx #7

Prey, Browning #11

Snow Creek, 6D

Moss, 6D

Dark Ops DCL Nano unpacking

I've gotten a lot of use out of the Gardepro T5CF #14 close focus trailcam since I got it two months ago, but it is a specialized camera and I don't see leaving it in the National Forest or on the back fence for months at a time. Today I received the Browning Dark Ops DCL Nano, which will be designated as camera #15. It's going out to the woods tomorrow to replace Browning #11, which will replace Browning #5 on my back fence. Thus ends the regular service of the two Strike Force Pros I purchased in 2017, but I will still use them for scouting new locations.

Except for the dual sensors, the new camera resembles the two older Brownings more than the larger BTC Patriot #11, which I got in 2022. The color scheme is different (darker), but all the controls are in a familiar locations, and the menu is substantially identical. The built-in screen is the same size as on the older cameras. It is smaller than the one on the Gardepro, but can actually be used for aiming the camera unless the sunlight is too bright. On the back, the two older Brownings say "Made in China," but the two newer ones say "Made in the Phillipines." That's an improvement.

Trail camera makers except Reconyx usually don't tell you the size of the sensors they use, but the manual for the new Browning says the daytime sensor has 4,208 x 2,368 effective pixels. If this is to be believed, it's a 10mp sensor. (The separate night sensor is 1,920 x 1,080, 2mp.) The manual says the Medium picture size is 10mp, which disagrees with the menu setting that says it is 8mp. Hopefully they were just too lazy to redo the menu and the images will be true 10mp. I just checked the manual for #11, which also is dual sensor, and it has exactly the same sensor specs, 10mp/2mp. The newer camera has a higher video resolution than #11, 4K vs. 1080p, but I rarely shoot video. I've decided the initial setting out the woods will be 4K video (23 frames per second), and I will extract frames for stills. It seems that the camera includes one JPG for each video, but it is only 1,920 x 1,080. I just did a test in Photoshop comparing an extracted frame to a still, and the quality seems the same. My biggest concern is that the memory card will fill up quickly and I can't leave the camera out there for six months unattended. Based on file size of my test videos, I estimate the 32Gb that came with it card will hold more than a thousand 10-second videos. If 10 seconds seems short, there is a feature where the video clip is extended up to two minutes if there is movement. We'll see how well that works. (It will take SDXC cards up to 512Gb, and after I brought #11 home, I noticed it had a 128Gb card in it. I will make that swap next time I am out there.)

Since #15 is going into the woods, it may be a while before I get some sample images to post. I hung it on the back fence overnight and did not get any deer, so did a walk test. I am not going to post images of myself, but I would describe the image quality of the stills as better than I've ever seen from a trailcam, including #11 which supposedly has the same specs. The 4K video is in a completely different league than anything I've had before.

Here is the new camera on the right, with Melted Browning #6, which I once had to pluck out of the ashes of a forest fire. #5 and #6 had distinguished careers considering the limitations of their image quality. The second image is the highlight of #5's career, a moose in the woods near Luther, MT in the winter of 2017-18. The final image is one of the better ones from #6's history. I decided to put #5 on the back side of the same tree as #15, at least for a while, but #6 is retired at least for now.

Breaking news: The Gardepro is officially "broken in." The portion of the latch that would allow me to attach a padlock has broken off. Since I don't lock cameras that are just in my yard, it doesn't matter. (The Brownings don't even have a way to attach a padlock to protect the CF card, just a loop for a cable lock to protect the camera.) If probably happened when the wind toppled it a week ago, but I just noticed.

Background

The big birds have been featured here the past few weeks. I decided to try for the medium and small birds today, focusing on fence posts near the birdbaths. I swear I check the background when I set up, but there's a bright white building in the first one and someone's house in the second one. My intent was to aim up and get the mountain as background, but the camera wasn't low enough. Anyway, a robin, and a sparrow with a moth. Canon 1D Mark II #9, 100-400mm zoom, motion trigger. Robin is zoomed to 200mm, sparrow to 240mm.

But I did get one big bird. I saw a black-chinned (or ruby-throated) hummingbird this morning, so I had the 500mm on the Canon 6D Mark II #12 set up on the patio trying to get it. Off in the distance I saw the female flicker on the fence, and got a few shots of her as she flew down to the birdbath. After a few minutes she flew away. Later I saw the male fly in and out, but the light was getting low and those images aren't worth posting. But I think I answered my question about whether the flickers approach the birdbath on foot or in the air.

I never got the black-chinned, but I did get a few more Calliopes. One is included below. Neither of these images is remote/motion triggered so technically they are not eligible to be posted here yada yada yada.

Somewhat happy accident

After giving up on autofocus with motion trigger yesterday, I inadvertently conducted another autofocus test today. I forgot to turn off autofocus after I did my prefocus. I did make a conscious decision to turn on high-speed burst, which fires off eight images in less than a second. I thought I would get more droplets in the air as the flicker's bill comes up out of the water, and I think it worked. Burst speed is one area where the Canon 1D Mark II #9 is actually superior to my two newer DSLRs, which are about two frames per second slower. I ended up with almost 700 images, 75% of which were out of focus and could be deleted immediately. Not all of the other 25% were perfectly focused, but many of them were. As I've said before, the 1D's job is to soak up shutter actuations so my newer cameras don't have to. In a semi-controlled environment with fairly big birds and a sharp new lens, 2004 technology and 8 megapixels is usually good enough. (It's worth remembering that the original of my most famous wildlife image is only 4 megapixels because the 1D Mark II showed after I left on my trip to Maine.) It doesn't cost anything except time to wade through 700 digital images to find two good ones. (Or in the case of the trail camera, 40,000 to find two good ones.) As someone who grew up with film, I'm still getting used to that, even after 20 years.

Northern Flicker

In the past 10 days, I've gotten more than 200 publishable images similar to this one, the flicker perched on the left side of the birdbath getting a drink. I started wondering what path the flicker takes to get to the bath. Does it walk in from the tall grass on the other side of the fence, or does it fly in? Rather than collecting hundreds of "crow on a rock" images again today, I took the Gardepro T5CF #14 and spiked it into the lawn between the fence and the bath to try to get the answer.

The flicker made two appearances on the 1D today, none on the Gardepro. So apparently it does not walk in a direct line from the fence to the bath. Even though I have hundreds of flicker images, I have actually seen the flicker only twice. The second time was today. I did not see it arrive, but when it left it was via the air. I'll leave the Gardepro stuck into the lawn for another day to see whatever there is to see. Looking back at previous days, on the 16th there is an image that seems to show the flicker arriving by air, but it is out of focus and not postable.

Here are a couple other birds that came by the bath today, a robin and a magpie. The eye of the magpie is blurred, but it is not out of focus. It's motion blur. It was late in the day and shutter speed was only 1/160. At ISO 250 and f/8, shutter speed in good light is around 1/1,000, which might have frozen that motion blur. The 1D is not as good as the newer cameras at high ISO, and in any event does not have automatic ISO adjustment, so this is one of those tradeoffs for soaking up those actuations. I'll just shoot when there is good light.

Robin

Magpie

Counting crows

With the 1D watching the birdbath, the Gardepro T5CF #14 was a few feet to the right watching the rocks below the bird feeder. There are some days when the crows spend all day there, and yesterday two of them did just that. The t-post clamp on the tomato pole worked well, and I got a couple thousand images. I decided not to post all of them.

I'm hoping the flicker will come to these rocks. That is were I first saw him this year. I'll let the feeder go empty of sunflower seeds and that will discourage the crows for a few days.

Sharp

"It's not sharp."

Those words haunt me now, 45 years later. The person who spoke them was the photographer at the newspaper where I worked, and he was looking at a black & white sports photo I had taken. Even though it was a small, rural weekly, he was a photography pro who had experience in the Army and at a major motorcycle racing magazine. He ended up at this podunk weekly because he married the publisher's daughter. (But that's another story. A long, long story. But anyway.)

I thought the image was fine. But I looked more closely, and I saw it. And I can never unsee it. The image was not sharp.

In the last week, to get flicker images with my DSLRs and motion trigger, I pre-focus manually and turn off autofocus. Sometimes the image is sharp, sometimes it just misses. I decided to give autofocus a try, just to see what would happen. I used the Canon 1D Mark II #9 to save wear and tear on my newer cameras, and the 100-400mm zoom at 320mm. The first 76 images missed the subject and were focused on the background (including some of the flicker), the next 20 looked like they were in focus, then there were another 69 fuzzy ones before I retrieved the card.

The 20 "good" images were of a crow perched on the left side of the birdbath. The focus point hit him on the legs/lower body. If he had been parallel to the camera it might have been OK, but his head was a few inches closer to the camera than the focus point, and that was just enough. In wildlife photography, 99% of the time you want the eye to be sharp, and on these 20, it was not. I could zoom out as far a possible and come up with an image that would be acceptable to post on Facebook. Someone might even comment, "What a great picture of a crow." But I would know. As Richard used to say, "It's not sharp."

I could set the focus point higher, but I'm not sure that would increase my chances of success. I think using autofocus with motion trigger is just as big of a crap shoot as using manual pre-focus. Unless I'm behind the camera and setting the focus point on the bird's eye, it's a matter of chance whether the image will be sharp.

With that preamble, here are this afternoon's images. The first one is the autofocus crow, not sharp if you examine it closely. The other three are prefocused, tack sharp and technically some of the better images I've gotten with the 1D in the past 20 years.

Dawn

This image of a deer sums up why I don't think the Gardepro T5CF #14 is a good general purpose camera. It was taken at 4:50 am today, and the camera does not do well in that twilight zone when there is too much light for the IR flash. That's why I'm getting another Browning. And also, here is this morning's flicker, snapped at 6:14 am. The position of the birdbath puts it behind a bush as the sun comes up. If I move it 20 feet to the right it would catch the morning light, but I wonder how the flicker would react to that. And then it would be behind the bush in the evening light. I could move it forward into the lawn, but I would have to move it back onto the rocks every Monday for the mowing crew. So it will probably stay where it is.

With the DSLR brought to bear for the autofocus test (see next post), the Gardepro has been moved over to the nearby rock just below the bird feeder. Rather than move the spike, I'm using another gadget I've had for a long time but haven't used much, a t-post attachment. I don't want to drive a giant t-post into the ground because that would take a long time and would look terrible, but with a wood spacer the gadget does attach to a tomato pole. I scattered a couple of sunflower seeds on top of the rock, which may attract something if the wind doesn't blow them away. I have seen the flicker on that rock, but not as often as at the birdbath.

Contrary to rumor, I am not changing the name of the blog to "Flickercam Central." But over the past nine days (it seems like longer), the flicker has been very reliable in showing up at the birdbath at least three times a day to get a drink.

One other little note. I'm not 100% sure, but I think there is a thin film of ice on the bath in the deer image. I don't know what the low was last night but the forecast was 35, and it is definitely chilly this morning. It is June 19 and the eastern part of the country is sweltering under a heat wave. Not us.