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Winston

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    Spacecraft Engineer

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  1. It's humbling and really cool to see this still being maintained nice work
  2. - Livestream - http://connectcast.tv/Winston - I run it throughout the day (GMT) when I can - - Nest currently under construction by the female, who is likely to be seen in the box every 10 minutes or so throughout the day - It's that time of year again where I stream the nesting attempts of a pair of blue t1ts inside a nest box in my garden in south-east England. As some of you may remember, I did the same last year: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/109939-blue-bird-nest-box-camera-live-stream/&page=1 For those unaware, this is what a blue t1t is: Blue T1t by Winston, on Flickr A small, garden and woodland bird, much like the Chickadee found in the United States. This year I have built a box capable of housing two cameras instead of one - the same top-down camera as last year, but now with an additional, higher quality, side-view camera. The new camera also has a working microphone, unlike the old one, so this time we have audio. While there's a lot of feedback in it, you can turn the volume down until it's not annoying and still hear birds inside the box just fine. A female blue t1t has been roosting in the box each night since January, and today, the 19th of April, she started to build her nest. After another couple of days she will most likely have the nest finished, at which point she will start to lay eggs. Blue t1ts usually lay about 9 or 10 eggs, sometimes more. Last year it was 9, but only one of the chicks survived long enough to leave the nest, but subsequently also died. The parents weren't finding them nearly enough food and sometimes resorted to giving them whole sunflower seeds from the feeders which isn't at all suitable for a young chick. I suspect they simply starved. This time I shall be providing live mealworms in the garden once the eggs hatch in the hope that the parents will utilise them to feed the chicks. With some luck, we'll see a healthy handful of chicks fledge this time round. Blue T1t Male and Female by Winston, on Flickr
  3. That's not what I said at all I would rather look at than
  4. Still, full moons are pretty uninteresting to observe, regardless of size Eclipse aside, I'd take a half-moon at apogee over a full moon at perigee any day for the pleasure of viewing surface features in relief
  5. I just used the built-in interval timer on my Nikon DSLRs at fixed exposure settings I have to say I kinda like the huge changes in light levels
  6. The best I could manage. Shooting for about 7 hours solid from midnight through sunrise. Conditions were perfect, however it was my first time doing time lapses of any sort and somewhat of a learning experience. I'd have done a lot differently. Having only two 16gb cards limited me a lot; I had to make shorter, lower framerate time lapses than I would have liked. Fairly pleased with my exposures however, which is always going to be tricky when the light levels change this much while the camera is set to a fixed exposure throughout. I aimed to overexpose the fully lit moon enough that at peak eclipse it would be correctly exposed, and I think I pretty much nailed that.
  7. The best I could manage. Shooting for about 7 hours solid from midnight through sunrise. Conditions were perfect, however it was my first time doing time lapses of any sort and somewhat of a learning experience. I'd have done a lot differently. Having only two 16gb cards limited me a lot; I had to make shorter, lower framerate time lapses than I would have liked. Fairly pleased with my exposures however, which is always going to be tricky when the light levels change this much while the camera is set to a fixed exposure throughout. I aimed to overexpose the fully lit moon enough that at peak eclipse it would be correctly exposed, and I think I pretty much nailed that.
  8. You are welcome I will continue to post updates on the chick Assuming it survives the next few days, it should appear at my feeders with the parents and I'll try to get some pictures of it It's not out of the question that the same pair of birds, or even a different pair, might use the nest to raise another brood, in which case I will of course be streaming that too
  9. The chick fledged today, 19 days after hatching, at 01:13:53 GMT It currently resides in some very dense brambles where the parents are feeding it I believe this is quite a premature fledging The chick is still quite a lot smaller than an adult and unable to fly - usually they reach the same size as an adult and develop their wing muscles enough to fly before leaving the nest
  10. Update on the nest - there is now only one chick left alive. The other eight died, likely of starvation. The remaining chick was always the biggest and was fed the majority of the food as a result. It has a good set of feathers coming through and it has started preening itself and generally looking perky and healthy. It is still being regularly fed by both parents and kept warm by the female, so if that keeps up I think it may just survive.
  11. I don't know what the average is... it's not unheard of for none of them to survive, but I've seen instances of more than 10 fledging. It depends hugely on things like how warm a spring it is and how much food happens to be available in the area. Actual adulthood is another matter, because after leaving the nest there are cats and hawks to contend with during the time it takes for them to transition to adult plumage.
  12. That wasn't what I meant at all. I'm aware that birds have practically no sense of smell, so that never entered into my mind. I just doubted whether putting him back in the nest would actually improve his condition. And I am pretty sure handling them is illegal because well-meaning people tend to think young birds need "rescuing" and take them away from their parents end up basically causing their deaths.
  13. my brother and I attempted to revive him by putting him in some tissue on a hot water bottle, but he soon stopped breathing completely and is now dead at least we don't have to look at a corpse for the next couple of weeks
  14. It is in fact still breathing, however pretty slowly for a small bird. I don't know if moving him back into the nest where it's warm would help him or not, I'm also fairly certain handling live chicks is illegal.
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