nature...

Over the summer, one of my colleagues presented their hedgecam footage as part of our Tuesday morning informal meetings. I'd been thinking for a while of how I might work out all the patterings of tiny feet on my cabin shed, so I put the spare security camera up for a few days, then decided to bite the bullet and get an inexpensive trail camera...

We used our Blink for initial recordings and enjoyed the fact that we could tap in to watch live whenever we wanted to. However, looking at proper robust outside cameras that can take a bit of rough treatment, a live feed wasn't going to be within budget. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
The first few days of the Blink revealed that the pigeons weren't spending much time on the cabin roof at all (unlike the bedroom roof previously). The big beasties were the magpies, medium ones were juvenile blackbirds and the fast hoppy scratchy ones were robins. Not many squirrels at that point.
The magpies were quite curious about the camera at first. They tried to feed it, then when it wouldn't take the food, they started attacking it...

As we need that camera for our home security system, that's the point where I started thinking about something more robust and purpose built. Eventually settled on one of these when I realised we didn't want to invest that much dosh in a live feed camera. I didn't like the way they were all called "hunting cameras" - implying guns and capture. I just wanted to look!
Anyway, it was relatively easy to set up, button menus for settings, slide switch on the bottom to move between off/setup/record and a simple clamp mechanism to seal it. Set it up put it on the roof and waited to see what happened...
Magpies of course. Took them no time at all to introduce themselves, try to adopt it, then get hostile!