I can’t believe I missed these clips when putting together the compilation. Well, okay, I can, since I forgot that I attempted to get some underwater footage of their zoomies with the Ricoh WG-60 waterproof camera, but the pond water was far too murky for that. Anyway, a brief interlude:
Listening to The Girlfriend’s baby talk is still amusing…
… that one of these days I’ll break my streak of bad luck in attempting to capture meteors. That’s how odds work, right?
Anyway, the Geminids meteor shower is peaking over the next few nights, specifically Saturday at about 10 PM EST (or 0300 UTC Sunday morning,) while the moon will be dark, so if you have clear skies, go for it and show me up. According to informed sources, it’s supposed to be a good year for Geminids.
Not only that, but there’s a campaign to observe meteor impacts on the moon itself, since it will be a waning crescent rising in the early morning (1:25 AM EDT tonight/tomorrow morning, 2:23 AM Saturday night/Sunday morning,) so if you want to participate, check out this link. There’s a chance I might have the ability to do some lunar video, since at present, the tracking motor seems to be working correctly; the initial tests and timing of the rotation seem reasonably accurate, anyway. I was busy with video last night and so did not perform an acid test, and tonight might be too cloudy to allow it. We’ll see, I guess.
While I’m here, several days back there was a claim of significant sunspot activity, naturally occurring while we were under steady overcast and rain conditions. Within two days, it cleared to a decent degree in the morning, but my first attempt was while the sun was still peeking through bare winter branches.
No problem – I could wait for it to rise high enough. Unfortunately, the clouds couldn’t, and they were already blocking the sun before it even cleared the trees – not completely, but enough that seeing any sunspots was out of the question. However, as the day wore on, the clouds wore thin at sporadic times, and for one of those, I snuck in and snagged a couple of frames in the thirty seconds or so that I had, even with wisps crossing the face of the sun.
Yeah, that’s not exactly ‘significant’ sunspot activity, though granted, this was a few days past the alert. And apparently, in the very early days of the activity, Australia got bombarded with the effects of the solar flare that accompanied the first of the spots, so initially it was pretty active, at least.
[A note on sunspot and solar flares: the sun rotates, and is a significant distance away. This means that the radiation from solar flares doesn’t come straight out from the flare, or any spot, but is affected by precession, as well as taking a little time to get here since it’s not traveling at the speed of light. So spots and flares that appear directly towards us are not likely to send anything our way, but ones just appearing around the western ‘limb’ might, and this seems to have been the case. My photos were taken December 7th, while Australia got affected back on the 1st.]
Anyway, go chase some Geminids, and good luck!
Almost an extension of last week’s, which seems like it was a lot longer ago than it was. This was because I got the photos and video clip for last week’s that Monday, only three days after the preceding Find (XLVIII) and four days before it posted, and now these clips came this past Wednesday and Thursday evenings, nine and ten days following. Is that confusing? Let’s just say it’s been more than a week between and that disoriented me slightly.
But here’s what we have:
Some, so notes. Some time back, I had an idea for mounting the off-camera video monitor in a way that I could use it easily in the field, and designed and printed a quick bracket to do so, embedding a T-nut within so that a standard tripod screw (1/4-20) could be attached, and affixed a double-ended balljoint thingy to attach the monitor to.
This just slips into the vest pocket of whatever shirt I’m wearing, or into the pocket of a photographer’s vest if I don’t have pockets on the shirt or jacket. I found this was inadequate, allowing too much play with the weight of the monitor, so I cut a slot and added a metal brace to go up behind my shoulder.
This would put the monitor right at my shoulder where it would be out of the way but I could drop my eye down to it easily, using the magnifying eyepiece for fine focus as needed.
Then, for over a year, I never had the opportunity to put it to the test – or to be more specific, I didn’t bother getting it out because I wasn’t expecting to need it. But with the nutria bebbies now coming around most nights, plus strong indications that the beavers were active, I got the rig back together.
I was in the process of trying to find an appropriately bright flashlight to use when I remembered the one we kept in the car for emergencies. Like any such flashlight, the batteries were long dead, but I replaced them and found it was adequately bright enough, and so this got mounted to the video cage.
Another view, showing the arm that the flashlight mounts to for precise aiming, though for the first night’s clips, I had rushed out there and not finely adjusted the beam, so it was aimed a little low. I did better on the second night, but then the nutria were so close at times that it was almost overpowering.
All together, it looks like this:
A long enough HDMI cord to permit moving the rig around without snagging. One hand to hold the cage, the other free to adjust focus and zoom since the 7D doesn’t allow autofocus during video – that’s the value of the external monitor, since holding the rig up to eye level, with microphone and light attached, to see the LCD screen and focus is just stupid.
With the monitor right there, I can easily put my eye down to use the magnifying eyepiece and get a sharper focus – the only problem with this is, the resolution of the HDMI monitor that I purchased is slightly low for critical focusing, though as you can see from the clips, it’s not that bad, especially considering how dark the conditions were.
Or, I can simply flip the magnifying eyepiece out of the way and use the monitor directly, though I avoid this for night shooting since this throws a bit of light on my face. The flashlight does a lot for disguising my presence in the glare, but if I get anything into the light beam the subject will often spook, realizing that something is a lot closer than suspected.
One drawback right now is that the flashlight I’m using has a very stiff zoom head – it can make the light quite bright where needed, but adjusting it usually takes one hand on the zoom head and one on the flashlight barrel, which doesn’t leave any to actually hold the video rig, much less make adjustments to the camera. Thankfully, I shouldn’t have to adjust this often, once I find the sweet spot to maximize the light without reducing the field of view too far.
And one other thing, which I might be in the process of correcting. To start and stop the video requires hitting a button on the back of the camera alongside the viewfinder, an awkward location given where my hands have to be otherwise, and for some godawful stupid reason, using a standard wired remote release does not work for video. The infra-red remote does, however; not a useful thing as is, since it requires palming the remote in a location in front of the camera – again, using the third or fourth hand – but I may be on the verge of a workaround.
Yes, I could be using a dedicated video body for this – send me a couple of grand and I’ll be happy to oblige; those damn things are expensive. Or, as I realized after getting these clips, I could switch over to the camcorder for uses such as these – I kind of put it out of my mind because the built-in zoom lens doesn’t have the reach of the Tamron 150-600mm lens that I often use for wildlife work. That’s not necessary here, though, so we may see what happens.
At some point, I’ll be back and list/illustrate the various modifications that I’ve made to accommodate my ‘style’ and approach to photography – I’ve had it on the docket for a while now, I just have to sit down and get a lot of photographs. Meanwhile, you can go back to the end of the video and pay close attention to the part where the geese fly over, since the microphone actually captured the whirring of their wings as they passed overhead – I just now realized that.
About to start this post, I checked to see if I’d used the title “Pathetic” before, and I had, to describe my efforts in recognizing a particular holiday. What I’m referring to now, though, is the overnight “snow'” that we had Monday night/Tuesday morning; I don’t care what part of the world you might live in, I doubt you could consider this evidence of a snowstorm:
The vapor looked nice, seeming to indicate that I’d forgotten to turn the burners off on the grill the last time we’d used it, but it’s just from the morning sun. Capturing that against the darker background made the snow bleach out into gross overexposure, so maybe we are talking about my efforts again. I attempted to adjust the exposure to account for this, and the wind shifted or the light angle progressed too far, because the vapor stopped being visible, and I moved on to other subjects.
I feel obligated to point out the single raindrop on this camellia (Theaceae) blossom since it’s easy to miss; the conditions had been light rain for several hours before it turned to snow, so most things were still too warm to allow the snow to stick. I had even been out in it during the peak of the overnight ‘storm,’ attempting to shoot a little night video that might appear here later on if I get some additional clips – trust me, it wasn’t even risking the uncovered camera.
Out of the sunlight, however, a few things showed that the temperature had dropped below 0°c.
That’s the surface of the watering cans outside of the greenhouse, though the ice was probably no more than 2mm thick. The light angle was right to bring them out, though.
And if it hadn’t been for the bubble trails left in this raindrop as it froze, you’d never know it was frozen at all. Other than the grill cover and the table on the deck, I pretty much had to look carefully for signs that it had even reached freezing, though the crunch of the grass was an audible clue. So we return to the grill cover to get a little fartsy – or fartsier, perhaps.
Sigma 180mm macro lens at f6.3, producing a relatively short depth-of-field. This meant some of the sparkles from the snowflakes produced nice visible ‘circles of confusion,’ otherwise often known as ‘bokeh.’ I boosted contrast and saturation slightly to make them stand out better. Then, I did it again with another frame…
… only this time, instead of boosting Saturation by 20%, I made it 100%. Not a huge difference, indicating how little color there was in the first place, but it made the bokeh stand out nicely.
That was it, though – that exhausted the myriad photographic possibilities exhibited by the snow. Ready for spring now.
Just a quick shot from this morning’s frenzy, snapped in the middle of a video clip. There are two things of minor interest within, the reasons I’m posting this. The first is, this was a little before sunrise, or perhaps right at astronomical sunrise (actually, the timestamp is pretty damn close to this mark,) but well before the sun would peek through the trees. However, the sky turned orange for just a minute or so as the sun broke through whatever cloud cover was on the horizon, and this color reflected from the water to produce a nice hue, which is why I tripped the shutter in the middle of the video. Very soon after this, that color faded and we went back to grey twilight skies and thus background.
The second is, I was able to do a count of the ducks in this frame, and have a dependable number of 46, with probably a few hiding behind others in there. During the video I panned left, and just now I paused and checked, and there are at least another 24 that fell outside of this frame. To be honest, this didn’t look like the busiest frenzy we’ve seen, so I suspect we’ve had more – one of these days I’ll work my way through some of the video clips and try for a supportable count.
This, by the way, was the first wave; after they spooked (as usual,) a lot of them could be seen heading towards the channel to The Bayou. But then a second wave descended on the yard, cleaning up most of the corn that we’d put down, and that was quite a bit. They had a little help from a small herd of five deer that showed up a few minutes after this pic, too. But the question is now raised: were the two waves largely all the same ducks, simply going back and forth based on their insecurity, or do we have shifts of a few different flocks that take turns coming in? I mean, I admit I’m probably a bit Anatidaecist, since with the exception of species and sex, they all look alike to me so I can’t tell individuals apart, meaning I’m open to solutions, but I suspect this will be one of those questions that remains unanswered.
Regardless, it’s a lot of ducks. And this was before the geese even wandered up for their shift…
Several days back we looked out and suddenly found mallards out there on the pond, after having them all disappear sometime in July I believe. This was noteworthy by itself, to a small degree, but there was an aspect that made us a little excited, in that, some of them might have been ‘ours.’
You see, over the summer we raised a trio of orphaned mallards and, well, no point in repeating everything that’s in the video…
So, some clarification that didn’t make it into the narration. The mother that we found was definitely killed by a predator of some kind, since she was missing her head, and we have no idea whether she only had a brood of three or if some of the siblings had fallen prey too. After having seen how the red-shouldered hawk decapitated one of the visiting wood ducks here before eventually making off with the carcass, we consider that supporting evidence for what happened to the mother of these, especially since this was right at a crossover path between a nicely sheltered wetland marsh and the river itself; it might have occurred on their very first day out of the nest.
Our biggest concern was that these orphans grew up healthy and without developmental problems, since they weren’t getting exactly what they would in the wild nor following their mother around, so we made sure to have a balanced diet and provide exercise. Another concern was how well they would fend for themselves without learning anything from their mother or a proper foster, but that proved to be unfounded: they appeared to have all the instincts that they needed right from the start. And finally there was the possibility that, with only being around people, they would ‘imprint’ and never become truly wild nor capable of fending for themselves, and we would end up with a set of habituated resident ducks, which we were prepared for even as we tried to ensure that it didn’t happen. All told, it went almost entirely without any issues at all and they seemed to thrive quite well until they left out on their own.
The most amusing bit, in retrospect, was that we went to a lot of effort to provide an enclosed section of yard and pond, complete with a ‘coop’ roosting box that I constructed for them to spend the night safe from predators – and they refused to have anything to do with it. We spent a few days trying to get them comfortable with both the coop and their enclosure, and it was stressing them out more than anything else. Curiously, they did the first couple of days foraging around half-heartedly in the enclosed section of pond, and then abruptly become almost terrified of it and couldn’t even be herded into the water – that’s what you’re seeing above. The best we can say is that something spooked them, whether it was a snake or a turtle or what – nothing sizable should have been able to get into the screening that I’d set up and we had no dangerous turtles in the pond regardless, plus we were out there with them a large portion of the time and saw absolutely nothing. They remained quite wary of the pond for weeks, insisting on overcrowding that little trough that you see in the video, before suddenly deciding the pond was okay after all, and after that they behaved a lot more like proper ducks – that’s them on Duck Island below.
It’s funny – we know we’d like to see them again, just for the sake of it, but there’s one bit that we don’t miss, The Girlfriend especially, and that’s the amount of mess they made. Ducks shit constantly, everywhere, and cleaning their playpen, and later the entire porch, was a twice-daily routine, carrying all of their pans and the entire liner of the playpen out to be hosed off while they cavorted in their water trough or went exploring. It generally took the both of us, and on two occasions when one or the other of us had to travel overnight, the one left behind was juggling these tasks. But there was another little bit too, just a burning curiosity. Ducks get their adult plumage around September, and by this you can differentiate the sexes, but ours left before that happened, so the entire time we knew them only by their juvenile plumage and thus no idea what sex they might be, though we had guesses based on size and behavior; we just never got to find out if we were right.
Now, the reason none of this appeared on the blog is that, technically, we weren’t supposed to be doing this; while I used to do wildlife rehabilitation years (decades!) back, I was licensed under the organization, but never on my own, and both state and federal permits are required for this. The park ranger was okay with it and admitted that the ducklings would simply be released on their own if we didn’t take them, a sure death sentence at their age in an area rife with predators, yet it still wasn’t legal and I wasn’t setting a good example for the behavior that I encourage. It’s well over now, and with a species that is domesticated in large numbers anyway, so I doubt there would be repercussions.
This was The Girlfriend’s first exposure to wildlife rehab, but honestly, these guys were easy. Most other birds are extremely high maintenance, often requiring feeding every half-hour throughout the daylight hours, while for mammals it’s every four hours, around the clock. Circumstances where the animals don’t survive (or develop serious problems) are fairly numerous, proper diets can be tricky and critical, and one has to be prepared to see all their efforts end up in vain. Monitoring their growth was rewarding and encouraging, but seeing them fly for the first time was a strong indication that everything was going quite well.
By the way, not too long after they learned how to fly, still not landing as agilely as they could, they were out with us for the morning exercise and cleaning session and, with no warning or provocation, abruptly took off, flying together in a straight line way down out of sight about three houses away. We had no idea what provoked this, and we ended up cruising around the neighborhood trying to find where they went, afraid they might run afoul of a dog or simply traffic (though there’s practically none in the immediate area.) We saw or heard absolutely no sign of them, and returned with The Girlfriend fretting that they were gone for good, but 45 minutes later I heard them quacking for attention outside my window, right alongside where they’d left from. For the next several days, they made it a point on their own to maintain visual contact with us regardless, which told us that the excursion stressed them out a little bit. This was well before they even met the wild mallard seen in the video.
So, if we ever determine to a reasonable extent that any of the mallards now visiting are our former charges, you’ll know about it. But as I said in the video, this was the goal and an ideal outcome for them, so we’re good with it. And I’ll close with my favorite photo, the one that I call the album cover:
… and I’m sure you didn’t miss my foot in there…
As hinted at in some previous posts, I now have a new instructional video available – my second, I believe. This one has a simple technique to reduce the background or recording hiss from the audio within video clips, and can make your video sound much cleaner and slicker. Even better, it can be accomplished with open-source freeware that’s available for Linux, Windows, and Mac.
Audacity audio editing software.
Kdenlive video editing software.
The important thing to remember is that it’s easy to overdo the settings, sounding good initially but clipping some of the wanted background sounds or introducing warble or distortion, and it’s better to err on the side of ‘imperfect’ rather than produce something that starts to sound edited or unreal.
I am by no means a master of this kind of thing (No! Really?!) and you may find better techniques out there. I’ve been learning editing as I go, occasionally seeking out specific functions as needed rather than, you know, trying to learn the software from the ground up, or through a comprehensive course. This technique is identical to the standard noise reduction function that should be used for all audio recordings, one that I’ve been using for years, and applying it to the audio track of a video clip only takes a sample of the background hiss (recorded in a silent room) and then the trivial task of swapping the audio tracks in the video editor, and adds only a few minutes to the entire editing process. Hopefully it helps someone.
I still have one more video project to complete, now in the voiceover stage, so you’ll see that here within a few days. To say nothing of whatever else might pop up in the interim…
Credit for this one goes to The Girlfriend, a discovery made while she was distributing the thrice-daily ration of corn for the various critters that come to partake; we now have (at least) two more:
But we’re not letting it go at that, because I have still images too.
When she came to get me, I knew the camera and long lens was still affixed to the tripod in the upstairs bathroom vantage spot, plus she hadn’t told me what I was coming out for, so I didn’t have the camera in hand. Thus, I had to immediately turn around and trot down to Deep 13 to grab the memory card, then up two flights of stairs to snag the camera, then back down and out the back door to get the shots; there was every reason to believe the nutrias would be gone by then. They were quite complacent, however, and I was able to keep firing off frames as I stepped closer. I couldn’t say that I ‘crept’ closer because I was well out in plain sight with no cover, so I just moved slowly. They didn’t seem to notice or care much.
In fact, they were generous enough to pose nicely and the light angle was great, this being about 2:30 PM. You can look at the corn for a rough sense of scale, but they were about rabbit-sized, or 1/4-1/3 the size of the adults.
I was less than ten meters off when one of them spooked just a little and hopped off about two meters, then paused and resumed eating. This was the one that stayed put, faintly cautious but nothing more. I don’t know if I can put this down to being mellow around people, or habituated by one of the neighbors that also puts down food, or simply bad eyesight, but I’m cool with it regardless.
This was the one that had skipped off just a wee bit, and you can see an apparent difference in the color cast of its coat, just like the adults. The larger adult is slightly golden too, and I’m surmising that’s the male, so is this a gender trait or simply random genetics? Can’t say, but since I’d dubbed the gold adult ‘Itchy,’ this one became ‘Itchy Junior’ when The Girlfriend asked me which one was visiting the next day (in the video,) causing her to snort out the water she was drinking. Maybe at some point I’ll dig through the thesaurus for synonyms for ‘itch’ or ‘scratch,’ for baby names. Feel free to suggest some.
But yeah, this is definitely a cool piece of property. We lucked out big time.
I’ve been in the middle of two video projects, trying to find the opportunities to finish them, so naturally I add a third. But I got a handful of photos today as well, so here’s what’s been happening here (except for the other things which you’ll see eventually.)
First off, I noticed something slightly odd-looking about a few of the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) this morning, so I fired off a few frames, then got a video clip as well.
For some reason, I simply couldn’t get focus nailed on these guys so they’re not as sharp as they should be, but it suffices to illustrate what I was seeing, anyway. There were two like this, though I only captured one at any given time, but at least I could time one next to an obvious adult.
We can see that the really bold stripe above the buff sides hasn’t made an appearance yet, but the iridescent wing colors are showing up nicely. I have to wonder if this is one of the males that was captured a couple of weeks ago that was just beginning to show the head stripes then. Regardless, we know there were several broods this year, spaced out a bit in timing, so this is likely one of them.
Ya gotta appreciate those markings, though.
Now we switch over to the greenhouse, since the Key lime trees (Citrus × aurantiifolia) are blooming even though most of the fruit has not fully ripened yet.
This made me get out the big paintbrushes that I use for pollination, even though it appears that the flowers are doing just fine pollinating themselves. We’ve considered putting a small fan in the greenhouse to stir up the air and assist in this function, but we’ve also been opening the vent windows, and when needed the door, as the days get warm enough, so pollinating insects may also be coming to visit. The trees probably don’t need my help, is what I’m saying, but I’ll keep it up anyway since we’d rather not find out too late that they weren’t germinating as well as we’d thought.
This is one that allowed us to see whether or not the stigma, the yellow blob at the top of the blossom, was actually receiving pollen. We go in much closer:
Yep, there are definitely a few pollen grains adhering to it, so it’s safe to say that this one is taken care of, or at least, as far as it’s possible to tell. The blossoming period when they’re wide open like this is remarkably short, so this will probably be a daily task, not that it’s arduous or anything. The lemon trees aren’t blooming yet, but we expect them fairly soon – they’re still heavily laden with lemons that don’t want to let go even with a firm tug, so we’re assuming they’re not fully ripened yet, though they’re brilliant yellow – from what I’ve read, the Meyer variety actually gets a tad orangish at full ripeness.
By the way, several Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) have made the greenhouse their winter home, as usual, and so I’m typically greeted by at least a few as I go in there. This one doesn’t appear thrilled by the encounter:
And yes, it’s been over a week, so this is okay.
Is this going to be an ongoing thing? Don’t know yet. And bear in mind, when I say, “Pro,” I’m referring to myself here, who is decidedly not a professional, is not making any kind of scratch with this, and should not be referred to as an authority on anything…
That out of the way, here’s the tip:
If you’re planning on recording audio in your basement studio, do not wait for the early morning hours when the temperature has dropped precipitously and the heat pumps that sit right outside your window are kicking on every few minutes to produce unwanted background noise on your audio track.
I have two video projects that I’m trying to work on, and can’t do the audio for either of them since I’d have far too narrow a window to work with, so they’re going to wait for the warmer midday hours. I could simply shut down the two heating systems (upstairs and downstairs) for the duration of the recording, but I’m afraid that I’ll forget one or the other and we’ll discover this when the indoor temperature has become rather frigid. I can wait – and by extension, so can you it seems.
I suppose, when the windows are eventually replaced down here, that we could opt for something that deadens that noise – but then I won’t be able to hear what’s going on in the pond or yard, and I’ve counted on that in a few instances already. I’ll just have to time things between the run cycles…
