Bath

I moved the Gardepro close focus camera #14 to the short bird bath today. I collapsed the tripod all the way and it still wasn't enough, so these images are from a high angle. I have a good tripod that will get much lower, but I don't want to leave it out in the weather like the cheap tripod, which is outside all through the winter. Anyway, shown here are three of the larger birds (flicker, magpie, crow), but there also were some robins (adult and fledgling) and sparrows. The flicker came three separate times during the day, so I may put out the motion trigger DSLR with the good/low tripod tomorrow. It is supposed to be sunny.

The crows spent quite a bit of time at the bath, and seemed to be chasing away the magpies when they came too close. But the magpies also got their turn.

The fourth image is manually triggered and is the lopsided buck from the last two years. The shape of the antlers is not evident in this image, but in another image shot as he was moving away, the deformity is visible. He ran right past Browning #5 to make his escape after I disturbed him eating our bushes, but upon checking the Browning I found that the batteries died two days ago. I use rechargeables in the yard cameras, otherwise I would be buying batteries all the time. The good cameras out in the woods go through batteries very slowly, every year or so, so they get the lithiums.

Flicker

Magpie

Crows

Lopsided buck

Overnight

I didn't learn my lesson from scanning through 6,000 potential hummingbird images yesterday. I set the Gardepro out overnight, aimed at the hummingbird feeder again but shooting from a lower angle to get the birds against the sky. This time I had 40,000 images to go through, taken between 8 pm and 9 am. I thought maybe there would be very few images in the dark, but the motion detector kept working through the night and more than 20,000 of the images were lit with the no-glow flash. I was hoping to get flash-lit birds, but there were none. The morning birds were still in shadow, but shooting against the sky gives good profiles.

Later in the day I put out the camera trying to get sunlit birds, and gleaned a few from the 10,000 additional images. At 4:42 when the fifth image shown below was taken, the sun had already moved to the point where the bird was mostly backlit. As I was taking a closer look, I realized it was not a Calliope like all of the other hummingbird images I've gotten since 2021. I'm going to say this is a Ruby-throated as I referenced previously in a 2021 blog post on my site. This reminds me that one of the other names for Trail Cameras is Scout Cameras. Now I know there is more in the area than just Calliopes. This fifth image was shot from only 12 inches away, and still the bird is very tiny.

I'm done for now with flipping through 10,000 images at a time. I will be moving the closeup camera to the small bird bath hoping to get a flicker or something.

Just before sunset yesterday

Just after sunset yesterday

20,000 images like this

After sunrise today

Not a Calliope

Something new

There hasn't been much action around the nest boxes besides the swallows, and the truth is I'm not as enamored of them as the bluebirds, so I moved the trail camera over to the hummingbird feeder. Who else would shoot hummingbirds with a trail camera? The reason this is a bad idea (besides the birds being really tiny) is the feeder sways back and forth in the wind, and there are lots of false triggers. It wasn't too windy this morning so I decided to chance it. The camera triggered about 6,000 times in three hours. The clip on the support keeps the feeder from rotating, but it can still sway.

Anyway, what I was hoping to get was the birds chasing each other. I witnessed that yesterday, but they were moving so fast there was no way I could photograph it. With the Gardepro wide angle and fast shutter speed, I thought they might swoop into view. I found a number of images with two birds in it, but not really swooping. Shown below two examples is a 400mm DSLR shot in comparison. Obviously there is no comparison, but I do these things anyway. Below that is a Northern Flicker that popped into the yard as I was trying to get hummingbird images with the DSLR.

I'll probably move the camera to the small bird bath next, hoping to get something similar to the fourth image, which I snapped yesterday.

Gardepro T5CF #14

Gardepro T5CF #14

Canon 6D Mark II #12, 100-400mm zoom lens at 400

Canon 6D Mark II #12, Northern Flicker

Where the bluebirds at?

Even though I put out two nest boxes under the internet-approved theory that swallows and bluebirds can nest side by side, it seems the swallows claim the entire backyard and the bluebirds have decided to reside elsewhere. But they did make a cameo a few days ago. Images taken with Gardepro T5CF #14.

Anyone home?

Just visiting

The Woods

Most people don't use trailcams to shoot little birds. And my best cameras are out in the woods trying to get big critters. The last six weeks in Custer National Forest saw a mountain lion, a couple moose, a few elk and the usual deer wander past my three cameras. Reconyx #2 got the bigger moose, but the image on Browning #11 was much better. A smaller moose showed up on my brother's camera (#13), not shown here. Reconyx #7 got the mountain lion and the elk.

And I'm sticking in a long exposure taken with the 6D (#12) of the creek that runs behind #2. It's sort of like a remote trigger because I put it on a 2-second delay to avoid camera shake, so I wasn't touching the camera when it took the image.

More hummingbirds

It was supposed to be cloudy most of the day but I put out the 6D (camera #12) with the 100-400mm lens anyway, prefocused and remote triggered with my phone.

The wireless connection was a bit unreliable today so I switched to the 5D #8 camera with the infrared remote trigger, still with the 100-400mm lens. I got a few remote triggered shots late in the day, but the best ones I got were when the hummingbird flew up while I was standing at the camera. A big issue with remote trigger is the need to prefocus, so I was able to use autofocus on these and get them perfectly in focus. And the light was a bit better late in the day. Technically these images should not be on this motion trigger/remote trigger blog since I was manually operating the camera, so sue me. I'm also throwing in a meadowlark image, also shot manually with the 5D and 100-40mm. I got meadowlark images the first two years we lived here, but they stayed out of range all of last year.

Hummingbirds

I put out my big 500mm lens on the 6D (camera #12) today, prefocusing on the hummingbird feeder. Then I used the Canon app on my phone as a remote trigger. The next step is to swap out the base of the feeder for the one that does not have perches so the hummingbirds have to work for their meal by hovering. Bwahaha.

Late in the day, I used the 100-400mm lens set at 312mm. I had a different tripod and didn't bother raising it, so the third and fourth images are shot from a lower angle against distant clouds. These are all heavily cropped because I'm trying to get the left and right perches in the frame, but what I'll probably do in a few days when conditions are supposed to be favorable again is zoom in on the left location (without the perch). I got my best shots last year in August, so there's time. I also might have to break down and operate the camera manually rather than sitting in my chair in the living room, which is how I got those good shots last year.

The 6D Mark II is not that much different from the 5D Mark III (camera #8) in regard to image quality, but has more features such as remote shooting and GPS. However, as a result, the 6D sucks juice out of the battery much faster than the 5D. Tradeoffs.

Unlike some places, such as my late aunt's yard in San Diego, I rarely get more than one hummingbird at a time. I think I saw (but did not photo) four at one time, but that was unusual. So it is a bit of a process to get anything, but what else do I have to do?