Well, it has taken me a long time to get around to writing another post to my blog but I just had to write something about the ongoing story of our new birdbox.

I bought one of Nature Cameras’ cedar birdboxes with built-in colour wireless camera and installed it late last year on the fence at the bottom of our garden.

The setup was relatively simple but the supplied monitoring software was geared towards security camera use and lacked some of the webcam features I was looking for. In the end I plumped for Active Webcam which provides everything I wanted.

The camera automatically provides its own illumination in low light conditions via an array of infra-red LEDs allowing the interior of the birdbox to be viewed at all times of the day or night. In fact, as the box is designed for Bluetits which require a very small entrance hole (1.25″), the infra-red illumination is required pretty much the whole time. Unfortunately this renders the colour capability of the camera virtually redundant as only a monochrome image is possible under infra-red light.

After installing the wireless receiver I configured the software to record a short video if it detects any motion so we wouldn’t miss anything. We avidly checked for activity over the winter months but there were no visitors, then on 6th April we found this video, we had a house-hunter!

Over the following weeks we saw lots of visits to the box, including some where two birds visited at the same time - definitely interested in the new des-res.

Then, on 3rd April one of the birds roosted in the box overnight, bringing in some feathers as well - could this be the beginning of nesting? The feathers disappeared the next day but the frequency of visits increased dramatically until on 9th April significant quantities of moss started to appear.

Nest building continued for the rest of April until an astonishing amount of material had been brought into the box and the nest started to take shape.

Then on 1st May the much anticipated event took place, the first egg was laid! There was much rejoicing in our family and I’m sure Mr and Mrs Bluetit were pretty chuffed too. Not only that but Mrs Bluetit laid a further egg every day for a week!

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
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Sunday

We now have a beautiful nest containing seven tiny eggs and a very dedicated mother sitting on them almost around the clock. Her hubby delivers a caterpillar or worm every so often but sometimes she leaves the nest to sit on a nearby branch - obviously wanting to stretch her wings and get a breath of fresh air. Whenever she does this, hubby quickly arrives with food and feeds her there, she then immediately returns to the nest!

We are now awaiting the first hatching which should take place in about a week’s time. Watch this space…

This morning I discovered that our lovely friendly squirrels are actually greedy little monsters!

I have been busy setting up a new Art, Design and Technology facility at Jennifer’s school for the last few days and have been rather remiss in putting out the peanuts first thing in the morning. The squirrels had therefore become impatient because their regular supply of peanuts had been late arriving.

In their desperation to become even fatter than they already are they decided to chew the bottom off the bird feeder by hanging upside down from the table. The photo shows the culprit enjoying the spoils with the chewed feeder base lying to his right.

I realise I have made a rod for my own back and will have to keep putting nuts out for ever now or the squirrels will be chewing through the house to get to the supplies themselves!

The layout of the main page with article excerpts has been somewhat erratic, with the excerpt text sometimes appearing alongside the icon as it is supposed to and sometimes underneath the icon. It was even correct for some articles and not for others on the same page.

After some investigation and with assistance from Rich I have implemented a fix which seems to be doing the trick.

Please tell me if you spot any more incidences and I’ll investigate further.

For those times when you need to let off some steam, vent your frustration or just satisfy a thirst for random violence, what could be better than an innocent sheet of bubblewrap.

Go on, you know you really want to… Click here

Whilst shopping in Preston market Sue spotted the ‘nut stall’ and bought a small bag of hazelnuts to see if the squirrels like them. I put a handful out with the usual pile of peanuts outside my window and watched for the first visitor.

It didn’t take long for Peanut (or Acorn) to find the pile and he started to examine the nuts, his nose twitching more vigorously than usual. He moved from one nut to the next, sniffing carefully, before arriving at a hazelnut. He then immediately picked up the hazelnut and ate the whole thing.

He repeated this several times, each time sniffing out the hazelnuts from the pile of peanuts and eating them. He then collected a mouthful of peanuts and bounded off to bury them as usual.

Clearly hazelnuts are a much preferred option compared with peanuts. Sadly for the squirrels, hazelnuts are also a much more expensive option and they are unlikely to get them in the same quantities!

I regularly put out seeds and raisins on our bird table and we see a wide range of birds including robins, blackbirds, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, collared doves and wood pigeons, plus the usual flock of starlings!

As the weather has gone colder I have supplemented this diet with peanuts which has had the added benefit of attracting squirrels to the garden.

We are now regularly visited by three squirrels, two adults and a younsgter, who have learned how to climb our squirrel-proof bird table pole and get onto the table itself, where they sit and happily stuff themselves with the peanuts. They do not tolerate each other’s presence very much, however, and chase each other at high speed around the garden if they get too close.

As they are now familiar with the garden and our movements insite the house I decided to put some peanuts on the ground outside the patio doors next to where I sit in my study. This has two advantages, firstly I get to see the squirrels very close (about 3 feet away) and secondly, there are two places to feed so two squirrels can be in the garden at the same time.

The only problem now is that I have to replenish the peanuts at least daily or the squirrels arrive and look around hopefully where the peanuts should be.

My daughter Jennifer has named the adults Peanut and Acorn but hasn’t yet decided on a name for the youngster.

Here’s a short video clip of Acorn (I think - it could be Peanut!).

This year we were privileged to be hosts to a family of blue tits who selected our nesting box as the location to bring up their brood.

We were treated to weeks of frantic activity by both parents, venturing to our bird table for seed and fat, whilst the squeaking noises from the box grew in intensity. All the while we were desperate to see what was happening inside the box as the chicks grew and finally fledged.

We missed the actual moment when the fledglings left the nest but we did see them sitting on the ground or on low branches of bushes looking fluffy and completely unafraid of humans. It was a wonderful moment to see the results of all that hard work by the parents.

For next year we have decided to invest in a bird box camera so we won’t have to wonder what is going on inside the box, assuming we get a pair to nest!

My investigations have led me to Nature Cameras who sell a variety of solutions, including self-install cameras and fully installed boxes with wired or wireless cameras built-in.

Both wired and wireless cameras provide an AV feed for connection to a TV or video but, after speaking to them this week, they will soon be offering a digital USB version of the wireless base-station which can be connected to your PC. The product is still undergoing reliability and technical trials but should be available within the month.

The first one is mine!

Don’t you just love it when technology is put to such pleasing uses?

Aardman Animations is mourning the loss of most of its history following a blaze in its victorian wharehouse in Bristol.

The majority of the sets, props and models used in its Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Morph and Creature Comforts films, plus awards and storyboards, have been lost. Fortunately none of the negatives were affected and the sets and models from their latest film - Curse of the Were-Rabbit were safe on display at a Bristol exhibition.

It was a terrible blow for the company at a time when they should have been celebrating the success of Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which went straight in at number one in the US box office.

Keiran Argo, Ardmann’s events and exhibitions manager, said “Aardman has been at the forefront of British animation and much of it has now been destroyed. One of the big things that has gone is the pie machine from Chicken Run, which was one of the largest pieces of set we have kept. It took months to research, develop and build at huge cost and was the centrepiece of many of our exhibitions over the years.”

Nick Park, however, put the tragedy into a more global perspective, saying it was “dreadful news” for the company but “not a big deal” compared with the earthquake in Pakistan.

(excerpts taken from an article in the Telegraph newspaper, 11^th October 2005)

One of the only forms of exercise I manage to do regularly is playing squash at my local sports club on a Sunday night.

Squash is one of those sports like golf where you have to be able to play before you can play (if that makes sense). You need to be fairly proficient before you can actually play anyone properly in order to practice and improve, it’s a chicken and egg situation.

Fortunately the majority of players are of an accommodating disposition and will happily ‘play to’ a novice player’s abilities, to allow them to actually play a few shots and run around a bit.

Squash playing has declined drastically from its heyday in the 1980s when it was virtually impossible to book a court without camping out at the sports centre a week in advance. These days many clubs are closing their courts and replacing them with billiard rooms or, more recently, gyms with cycling machines and treadmills.

I find this very saddening as the competitive spirit, the drive to improve and beat a better opponent and the simple cameraderie found in a sport like squash provide a so much more fulfilling experience than plodding on a treadmill or step machine, listening to an iPod.

My Sunday night club meeting is a wonderfully unstructured arrangement with people turning up at whatever time they are able and playing whoever is not yet on a court. We use American scoring (first to 21, all points count) to keep matches to a short duration, rather than the more usual English scoring where points only count to the server, with the serve changing over when the opponent scores.

All matches are played in a gentlemanly (or ladylike) manner with the finer points of the rules only adhered to in a mutually agreed manner. The variety of abilities ensures that people are able to face a challenge and provide a challenge so deriving maximum enjoyment.

We all need more exercise and those of us who find the thought of a gym faintly disturbing should beat a track to the nearest squash club and get some proper competitive sport into our lives.

Those of you in the know will recognise the quotation used for the tagline on this site.

It is, of course, the stunningly optimistic statement made by Wallace to Gromit on settling into his armchair at the end of ‘The Wrong Trousers’, a claymation film from the hands of Nick Park and Aardman Animations.

I am a great fan of Nick Park’s work and had the good fortune to meet him and his family at a civic reception in Preston. Nick originates from a village on the outskirts of Preston and was being honoured for his work by being presented with the keys of the city. As I have lived in Preston since 1988, I consider myself an honourary Prestonian and feel proud of my association with a local guy done good.

True to his Lancashire roots, Nick is very down-to-earth and shies away from the limelight, preferring to impress with his work behind the camera. His family are charming and after chatting with his father for some time I was struck by the subtle similarities to a certain cheese-loving, slipper-wearing character known for his bizarre inventions!

After the presentation, we all removed to Preston’s Charter Theatre for a Wallace and Gromit play, during which we discovered we were in the presence of three ‘Wallaces’; the actor playing Wallace on stage, Nick Park’s dad and Peter Sallis, the voice of Wallace, who was sitting directly in front of me in the audience!

Recently, whilst working in Bristol, I was amazed to discover that the offices I was working in actually adjoined those of Aardman Animations where the films were created!

Click here for a Wallace and Gromit short film