Alan's BirdCam Blog

Beautiful Birds

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Tue, 7 Mar 2006 22:24:00 -0500

Beautiful cardinals on a beautiful day. All this in my backyard- Amazing.

Click the picture to view the video.

Cardinals Everywhere!

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:18:00 -0500

I love these pretty red birds- and I am so glad that they are a regular part of the scenery around here- and in Fayetteville. This video is dedicated to Bryan Harding- serving in the Army in Kuwait. He emailed me and told me that watching my videos was like a short trip home to Georgia. Made my day. Enjoy Bryan. Click the picture to see the video.

Whitebreasted Nuthatches

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:22:00 -0500

These critters are all over my feeder all the time. I have finally learned to live with them - sort of.

On this video the Nuthatches are the stars- Right after the squirrel segment at the beginning, there is a pair of them for just a moment with their tail feathers flaired out, chattering to each other. They are so cute. There are also quite a few Tufted Titmice, a couple Wrens and a Cardinal.

Click the squirrel on the nose to see the video.

You can watch Full Screen

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 00:10:00 -0500

This is a (my first) Keynote presentation with text and screenshots on how to view my blog videos in full screen instead of the small size presented here in the blog. The blog is also a podcast- that's the ticket for seeing the videos large. If you are interested, follow these instructions- If you have questions, email me or leave comments here on the blog. Thanks for your interest.

As always, click the picture to see the video.

Female Downy Feeding Juvenile

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 15:17:00 -0500

This little episode really got my attention last summer. Recorded June 15, 2005, a female brought her baby to the suet and fed it right there for me to see. I could watch this one over and over again- and I do. Click the picture to see the video.

Technical note: I have been having a little trouble with Quicktime and FinalCut as of late. They quit wanting to export normally. So this video was exported from DV to h264 in iMovie. I would love to know if anyone is having any trouble seeing it. It did not have a (.mov) extension on it after iMovie got thru exporting it- I added it to the file name. If you can't open it, download it and remove the (.mov) extension.

Sharp Shinned Hawk on the deck

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 22:27:00 -0500

I came home from work one day and saw this hawk on my deck- He stayed for about half an hour- A squirrel comes up to check him out. There was another hawk up in the trees watching what was going on- I think he was a juvenile with mom or dad keeping lookout. They brought him to my feeder to show him where he could get a bite of dove or grackle. They eat other birds- not squirrels. Click the pic to see the video.

Cardinals, Chickadee, and a couple Titmice

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:44:00 -0500

This was recorded last year at around this time. It was much colder last year and the birds were all over my feeder everyday. The cardinals were lovely and the little birds were very animated and vocal. It was a good day on the feeder!

This video is h.264 codec. Please let me know if you have any trouble viewing it.

Click the picture to see the video.

Male and female House Finches

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Mon, 6 Feb 2006 17:22:00 -0500

Here is another h264 video- I hope you are able to view it! I could use some comments here people.

House Finches- a male and a female- a mating pair I think as this was taped at the beginning of the season last year. I do not see them too very often- just a couple times a year so I am all "ears and eyes" when they come around. I think they are very pretty.

Click the picture to see the video

Tiny Titmouse

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Mon, 6 Feb 2006 14:20:00 -0500

Hi Everybody,

This is Titmouse Tape. Nothing but 2.5 minutes of Tufted Titmouse.

I have been editing these movies in FinalCut and then exporting them as mp4 and for a while that was OK. This time I wanted to try something different because the mp4s have artifacts and my videos look all cloudy and kind of fuzzy in that format. This time I exported it as a .mov file. That's a proprietary quicktime format made of apple's new codec, h.264. If you can view the video, it will be a lot nicer than the mp4 format that I have been using. To view it you will need QuickTime 7. That's the new version that came out last spring. There are links to the windows version amd the mac version on the right hand side of this page.

I hope this works- If it does not, email me and I will go back to mp4.

Click the picture to see the movie

Wet Birds

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Fri, 3 Feb 2006 13:00:00 -0500

This was recorded last January- a little over a year now. We have some cardinals, male and female, a blue jay looking pretty and some doves. It was raining that day- everyone is looking a bit bedraggled.

Click the picture to see the video

Two Brown Thrashers

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 22:52:00 -0500

Two for the price of one!

Taped on the feeder last spring, I was awestruck when I saw two thrashers on the same suet block at the same time. They must have been mates!

Well, here they are. Click the picture to start the video. This one is pretty short so it will not take long to download.

January 29th, 2005 BirdCam

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 17:26:00 -0500

This movie was recorded last January 29th. It was a cold day with some snow and icy rain. There is a male cardinal with ice on his tail feathers and a female who looks pretty cold too. Also seen are a chickadee, a white throated sparrow, white breasted and brown headed nuthatches, a wren some doves and a titmouse. Click the picture to start the movie playing.

3 Minutes with a Downey Woodpecker

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 22:35:00 -0500

This little downey is so precious and he just stays and stays. At first I thought it was sick but after watching a few dozen times, I now think he was just resting and taking in what was going on. There were lots of other birds on and off the feeder while he was there. And those woodpeckers are not too gregarious. There are lots of dove noises in the background. A little shot of a wren there at the back.

This footage was recorded last March. It's one of my favorite moments. Since there is not a whole lot going on on my feeder lately, I am looking at my archives. Last year was a wonderful year. This is digitally remastered- it's like the second edit- an alternative take- whatever. Like the extras they have on DVDs.

Downey

Five Species

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 12:34:00 -0500

Yesterday was a little more like a normal day on the feeder. There was some variety but not the volume I have grown used to. On this tape there is a yellow rumped warbler, a brown thrasher, a wren, a male and a female cardinal and an intruder from the neighborhood. I watched from around 3:30 until dark at around 6:00. That was when the cardinals came.

BirdCam011805

Pine Warbler, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, others

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Fri, 6 Jan 2006 21:36:00 -0500

It's cold here today- finally. And the winter birds were hungry- finally. On this tape there is footage- well- inch*age of a pine warbler, a ruby-crowned kinglet and those little yellow-rumped warblers I started seeing on my feeder about a week ago. Oh gosh- they are so cute! All three of these I see only in winter. So that's how I know it's not summer anymore and that I should wear socks.

I also saw a male and female cardinal, chickadees, titmice, doves, white throated sparrows, and a pair of wrens- rusty brown wrens. Most of them were too far away to get on tape or did not stay on the feeder long enough to get focused on them.

PineWarbler

Yellow-rumped warblers (dendroica coronata)

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 17:31:00 -0500

After a very long "dry-spell" something happened on my feeder today. I had six yellow-rumped warblers romping around on my feeder almost all day. They had a good time eating suet and drinking water. They are very fast and they flit all over-in unison it seems. They all arrive at the same time and leave at the same time- they dive into each other and are either very playful or very competitive.

These must be young ones or females or both because the do not have the black mask that the mature males have. You can see on the large version of the video where the mask will be when they grow into it. Click the link below to see the video:

Butter-Butts

Cardinals show affection

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Mon, 7 Nov 2005 13:49:00 -0500

This video shows a male and a female during the mating and brooding season feeding each other seeds on the feeder. They appear to be in love, the way they so sweetly pass the seeds back and forth. It's hard to tell who's is feeding whom. It is great fun to watch! They are so cute.

http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/BC070405.mp4

Blog Looks Funny

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Mon, 7 Nov 2005 01:27:00 -0500

A problem has come to my attention. I have learned that this blog and probably many others on the blog site do not look right when viewed on some people's computers. This image on the top left is a screenshot of what the blog looks like on my computer when viewed with either the FireFox or Safari Web Browsers. If you are using WindowsXP, and the blog does not look like this, try using Firefox as your browser. It's free and it is very nice. Modern!

This picture with the blue around the edges is what the blog looks like with AOL's web browser and with MS IE. Oh, Nice! as Onslow would say.

Cardinals feeding their babies, 08/08/05

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Fri, 4 Nov 2005 01:21:00 -0500

The following 5 links, all shown in this post, will connect you to 15 minutes of male and female cardinals feeding their babies sunflower seeds on my feeder. Filmed this past summer on the 8th of August, the 5 videos are each 3 minutes long. I thought it would be more efficient to make 5 short videos than one long one.
http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/BC080805.mp4
http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/BC080805a.mp4
http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/BC080805b.mp4
http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/BC080805c.mp4
http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/BC080805d.mp4

BirdCam 110205 Cardinals

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Thu, 3 Nov 2005 01:00:00 -0500

I tweaked the video settings for this one a bit. Changed it from keyframe every 30 seconds to keyframe every 24 seconds. Greek to me. Let's see if it opens any faster. Probably crash your computer!

The cardinals closed up the feeder again tonight and the hood was a little quieter so we can actually hear the birds a little.

Click the link below to go to the movie:

http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/BC110205.mp4

Christmas Towhee

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Tue, 1 Nov 2005 19:05:00 -0500

I was looking through some older videos and I came across this one of a Towhee up on the feeder. That is very unusual. These guys are heard but not seen very often so it is a real treat when one shows his "whole self" somewhere he can actually be watched for a few minutes. This was recorded last Christmas Day. Click the link below to view the movie:
http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/Towhee.mp4

Testing 1234

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:03:00 -0500

The image to the left is a hyperlink- you should be able to click it and open the video the way they opened before- that is, slowly. I am going to try to make this text link a hyperlink without messing up the streaming video- so click it and see what happens.

http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/BC103105.mp4

Good luck. Oh, and by the way, the cardinals are still as lovely as ever- the neighborhood kids have been out playing at cardinal time lately so there is a lot of "unnatural" noise on this one.

Slow opening movies

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:40:00 -0500

I have been talking to my geek (future) son in law, Ivan, who has a master's in math and computer sciences and he tells me that some servers permit video streaming and some do not. If you click on one of my movies from my .Mac site it will open almost immediately and start playing as it downloads to your computer- this is called "streaming" video. My bird movies are optimized for streaming but apparently the hosting server has to support this function. So it looks as though on this site, blogger.com, the videos will have to download all the way before they will start playing.
That is a pain in the neck, I know, so at this time I am rethinking how to do all this posting stuff. Should I use the .Mac site and have pages that are not too attractive but allow fast showing movies? or should I use the blogger site which has a prettier look but lacks an important bit of functionality? I have contacted blogger.com's tech support- We will see what they say when (and if) they get back to me.

Bird Cam 042705

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 10:54:00 -0400

A beautiful pair of male rosebreasted grosbeaks, a female brown- headed cowbird, a beautiful pair of cardinals and a squalking bluejay. Recorded in April of this year.

http://homepage.mac.com/alarson2/BC042705.mp4

BirdCam 102405

alarson20@comcast.net (Alan Larson) — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 00:45:00 -0400

Click here to view Movie

Another late afternoon with my cardinal buddies. Males and females.