BirdBox 2021: tits, robins & wrens

Its been a strange season, and no mistake.

The cold weather, early on, seems to have delayed everything.

And we have seen at least 4 things we have never witnessed before.

BirdBox2020: here we go again

Listen! ...I can hear the birds!

The Covid Crisis has resulted in an unexpected benefit...

...a dramatic drop in traffic noise.

BirdBox2017: a few problems

This system was deployed just over a month ago and has been visited by blue tits almost every day.

It is basically doing its job by recording lots of video clips of both the inside and outside views of the bird box, which is mounted on the side of our pergola.

However, it does have a couple of problems that are rather annoying.

BirdBox2015: do we have our first egg?

The blue tits in last years box (the BirdBox2014 design) have continued to build and develop their nest.

Its team work, with the female doing apparently all materials procurement and building, while the male keeps guard and throws his little body at other blue & great tits that dare come too close.

And we may even have our first egg, if my interpretation of the event logs is correct.

BirdBox2015: no wait!....something is happening!

I dragged myself out of bed just after 7am to make the tea, and turn on the bird box monitor.

I was greeted by a blank screen, meaning both boxes were off.

But by the time I'd emptied the dishwasher, a female eSpeak voice proudly announced "bird box...on".

BirdBoxPi2015: this 'n that

The clock is ticking, but things are coming together nicely, if a little slowly.

Our garden is alive with birds at the moment, with mixed groups of finches, common tits (blue, coal & great), and the usual favourites including blackbird, thrush and a pair of robins.

To be honest, once we switched one of our feeders from mixed bird seed to sun flower hearts, we have seen quite an increase in bird traffic.

BirdBoxPiCam 2014; #2b Activity Based Power Control Details

Progress has been very slow through December, due to both project related issues, and real-life getting in the way (which is actually not a bad thing).

Project issues include a cmos 555 timer with a strange fault, a damaged RaspberryPi USB socket, and discovering my choice of relay was a bad one.

Although the relay had a 1A contact rating and looked suitable for a Raspberry Pi drawing less than 500mA, this rating is for a purely resistive load. (see earlier post for relay circuit details.)

BirdBox Activity Counter; what can we expect?

Fitting a sensor to the entrance of a garden bird box can provide you with additional data.

But what can you expect this data to reveal about your little feathered friends?

Prompted by ConwayChallenger's recent Blue Tit Monitor, I've just been taking another look at some bird box data from spring 2011.