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Live action cameras

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Ice out cameras, eagle nest cams and other critter cams, all manner of live action cams. Not counting highway traffic cams and other syphilization pornography.

How’s about a live action blackfly video feed?

Need volunteers for bait. Some nudity required. Will provide all the Spam you can eat.
 
This sounds like a situation where the moderator might be inclined to step in before any blood is spilled or reputations ruined forever.
 
No live action feed in my yard, but plenty of lively action feeding.
The action's heating up right in my backyard. A pair of House Wrens are considering my nest box for an abode. I do hope they'll stay this year.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/House_Wren/sounds
The Robins have sorted out their territory and joyously praising it, albeit an annoying codger fussing around the garden does get in the way everyday; the Robins scold him thoroughly.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Robin/id
Today a Crow caused a ruckus in my flowering crabtree. The Grackles and Robins noisily trying to chase it off before it found their nests and raided them for the chicks. The jet black figure looked menacing as it skulked amongst the branches, a dark hulk of feathers and beak punching a hole of darkness into the green foliage. My squeaking screen backdoor sent them all on their way, carrying with them a tumult of croaks, squawks and cries across the neighbourhood.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Crow/sounds
Baltimore Orioles are back this spring, nibbling at blossoms and buds in the trees. I sat with wine in hand last evening as a female flitted between the lilacs around my patio, she trailed a flood of heady perfume as she fluttered through the branches. Hummingbirds have been visiting these same lilacs ever since they first started blooming, adroitly avoiding the buzzing bumblebees arguing amongst themselves.
I know that the insect world is waking up after a long winter's sleep. Aside from busy ants, bees and butterflies (mostly Tortoise Shells at the moment) the more annoying bugs are just making an appearance, as I find more and more of them floating in my Merlot. Soon they'll be biting me as well as imbibing, and that's when I'll retire earlier indoors as the last warming rays dip below the maples. But I plan to fight back. By this summer there'll be a bat box newly built and ready for residents. I can't wait. More life in this suburban yard, and maybe a rewilding of sorts, so long as there'll be room for a chair, it's occupant, and his glass of wine. No slo-mo needed in this backyard.
 
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How’s about a live action blackfly video feed?

Need volunteers for bait. Some nudity required. Will provide all the Spam you can eat.

I think you'd need to set up a "storm chaser" van. Most of the time the black flies aren't biting in most places, but if you zoomed all over canoe country based on weather forecasts and local tips, you could zero in on the best place each day. Then, you'd put your volunteers on some lawn chairs (with sponsor logos) and record the carnage.
 
No live action feed in my yard, but plenty of lively action feeding.
The action's heating up right in my backyard. A pair of House Wrens are considering my nest box for an abode. I do hope they'll stay this year.
Today a Crow caused a ruckus in my flowering crabtree. The Grackles and Robins noisily trying to chase it off before it found their nests and raided them for the chicks. The jet black figure looked menacing as it skulked amongst the branches, a dark hulk of feathers and beak punching a hole of darkness into the green foliage
Baltimore Orioles are back this spring, nibbling at blossoms and buds in the trees. I sat with wine in hand last evening as a female flitted between the lilacs around my patio, she trailed a flood of heady perfume as she fluttered through the branches. Hummingbirds have been visiting these same lilacs ever since they first started blooming, adroitly avoiding the buzzing bumblebees arguing amongst themselves.

Brad, we are having out best year ever for birds at the feeders. Our hummingbirds have just stared settling in and aerial dog fighting at the feeders.

Bluebirds, indigo buntings, finches and warblers and sparrows. The usual several species of woodpeckers. Rose breasted grosbeaks last fall and again this spring. Gawd that’s a pretty bird.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgur...T4KHUvWAMwQ_B0IejAK&ei=JT04Wc_POMez-wHLrIPgDA

The birdsong all day long is a thing of beauty. It’s like a wonderful (and quite loud) wake up alarm at dawn, and watching their behaviors and bully pecking order at the feeders is a joy.

I’m not sure what made the difference this spring.

I kept 3 seed feeders and at least one suet feeder going for the past few years. Always there, always filled, probably more dependably refilled than in years past. Even when I was away travelling.

I put up a dozen or so nest boxes last fall. They have become filled and that couldn’t have hurt.

I have, uh, “reduced” the absurd and flippant grey squirrel population. I haven’t had to buy new feeders as often, and predation on eggs and nestlings has been lessened. The lovable chipmunks, who don’t destroy my feeders, are getting pudgy on seed under the feeders.

The red shouldered hawks that nest in the backyard are going have been going strong for years and the “crow brothers” are pure delight in their antics.

We have a full murder of crows, but three have laid claim to my property. They have distinct voices (one is especially hoarse). And they have different levels of crow intelligence.

One, and I think it is always the same one, has learned how to knock chunks of suet out of the chain hung suet feeder. It required a learning curve of hovering attempts and semi-comical failures, but he has the technique down pat now. His bros just sit on the ground below the suet egging him on.

“Baltimore Orioles”? Northern? Bullocks cross? I couldn’t tell them apart with a mist net and a field guide.

Now if I could just convince the wrens not to start building nests in the shop five minutes after I open the garage door.
 
Thanks for the update Mike, it sure sounds like you live in a big beautiful setting. Spacious enough for hawks, which can be a little shy and unsociable.
Here at home in my city yard the Wrens have moved in somewhere. The male is singing his little heart out everyday. The solitary nestbox has twigs and duff poking out of the entrance, so I'm hopeful there's a female sitting on a clutch of eggs. (I should build more of them) If I'm not mistaken (my memory fails me) males will have 1-3 mates in a territory if possible, so he must be trying for a bigger family. Fine by me. His tiny brown body swooping and gliding from cedar to lilac to birch to dogwood faster than my eyes can catch up; and when he's finally stationary again he starts that twittering song. Cardinals have settled down and settled in somewhere (I don't search for nests); the male has finally given his distinctive looping whistle a rest. He'd been singing since April! Robins rule the garden. Males still fight over wormy patches of soil where I've planted and sown my vegetables. Soon I should stumble across broken shells on the ground of the most pretty simulated sky, looking like shards of sunlit heavens fallen to earth. There's always a ruffled fluffy incredibly ugly (only a mother could love) chick staring blankly out from the tall grass in my yard. Without fail I find a young fledgling Robin, Grackle or Cardinal every year. I do my best to keep them hidden and unfound by the neighbourhood cats, so I'm never certain which survive, which don't make it. I have the cats "trained" to scoot whenever I step out onto my back porch. Poorly aimed rubber boots, my barking and a better aimed garden hose full of cold common sense soon has them wary of using my yard as a green space highway (or worse). Wish the skunks and racoons were so responsive. I finally called a truce (ie I gave up and gave in) with the mother skunk this spring. After years of filling in excavations and earthworks around my shed I built a slightly raised deck floor under the bicycle lean. With a new roof to compliment it, the bikes are now locked up and dry; a pungent sulphurous stink wafted up from under the shed and lean warning my carpentry efforts of the sleeping resident. No problem now. Her entry way is out of my way at last beyond a lattice wall and waist high ferns, so even if I were to clumsily wrestle with bikes and junk in the wee hours she and her kits have a safe (for me) passage away from all my human endeavours. At least that's the plan. We'll see if they respect it. I might want to wear an emergency garbage bag poncho to be on the safe side. And then there's the squirrel crowd. Greys of different colour phases brown through black, took up residence under my porch last winter. It was a hard cold spell through January. I didn't have the heart to evict them. Oh heck, I have no heart; I just couldn't drag my bones out there in the bitter cold to lift the deck boards and be that kind of landlord.
 
I'm not much of a bird connoisseur but our feeders are well-maintained and well-trafficked. We finally got our setup to be squirrel-proof, but the birds spill enough to keep the squirrels nearby anyway. We've got blueberries, grapes, and a few different kinds of fruit trees planted nearby. So it seems that we get a pretty decent variety of birds at the feeder. The bluebirds can't be mistaken for anything else. We also get the bluejays and cardinals, nuthatch, titmouse, several varieties of woodpecker. There are usually owls, hawks, and crows nearby. I should probably point a camera at the setup or at least start giving more of a dang about identifying the visitors.
 
Closest I come to live action is my dash cam or what I call the Bambi cam. I'm hoping to get some good action eventually and have proof if I finally hit one. They are persistent in running in front of me. Out here, Manitoba insurance wants to see blood and hair on your vehicle to prove you hit one. If you swerve and hit a tree they won't cover it.
 
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