"April 2 – I”ve been overdue in trying out my motion sensitive photography on the owls this year, as a follow-up to one night of experimentation last year. So, after a lot of work to make the motion sensor something I could remotely attach and detach from the nest box, building a tool for that purpose, and debugging a remote control pig-tail whose overly fine wires had broken in multiple places, I began installation of the rig around midnight of April 1/2.
With the camera equipment about 9 feet away from the nest box (though not in the nest box tree), the owls decided I was a nest site predator, despite our prior good relations, and somewhere on my neck and head I have multiple sets of talon marks to prove it. (One of these days, I must acquire a good hat.) Nonetheless everything was ultimately installed, and the camera operated from around 1:30 to 6:30 AM CDT.
One hundred forty nine photos were obtained that included an owl, of which 18 seem worthy of display (for one reason or another). You’ll find them mixed into the April 2 daily slide show in chronological order, along with the usual nest box interior images. You’ll start finding them at 2 AM, and stop finding them after 6:15 AM. (Note: Clicking on those images in the slide show will cause a larger version to be displayed.)
It’s clear to me that there’s still debugging needed in this setup. The sensor’s field of view seems to favor shots of the owls after they’ve dropped out of the nest box entry hole (leaving backwards, more often than not, in a process I have not seen, let alone caught on “film”), and are aggressively working to regain flight. Also, the focus is soft despite carefully locked focus that was based on direct measurements of the scene, and some time spent with a depth-of-field calculator. The same steps produced good focus for last year’s experiments, so obtaining good focus ought to be possible, even straightforward.
Desperately as we need the rain that kept Mme Owl in the nest box during the day today, its timing was inconvenient for me, in as much as it prevented any further experiments on the night of April 2/3, and the forecast indicates that it may well interfere with an attempt on April 3/4. Nonetheless, I’ll get other chances, and should be able to work out the problems (or learn to work with them to reasonable effect). "
Slide show at
http://gargravarr.cc.utexas.edu/owl/2013/20130402/
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