Animals – Page 21 – Robot Claw

Here Comes The Rain…

June 11, 2013

The destination for the day was Enoshima Island via the Great Buddha statue in Kamakura. After training it (~70 minutes) to the area, we hiked up and down a mountain for a bit:

This was part of the ‘Daibutsu hiking course’ and eventually led us to a wonderful little shrine and rest stop..,

At which KLS cooled herself…

And we met a cat!

As you can see, the grizzled beast was quite popular 🙂

A bit further on we reached Zentairi (sp?), a famous shrine said to increase the fortunes of anyone who washes money in its spring waters. The place was full of school children.

Eventually, after some Kamakura ‘boulevarding’, we reached the famous great Daibutsu statue:

It’s almost 800 years old, was cast in 30 pieces and is hollow (we went inside). A light rain had started to fall by now, and we were resting whenever it was convenient:

Oh, we saw squirrels yesterday!! I saw the first climbing bamboo but the second was on the street in Kamakura. He was very curious and came right up to a small crowd of people:

Look how brown and wooly he is! How cute!

After the train, at Enoshima station, we found too women posing a Woody revoltech figurine in a manner indicative of the ‘Hentai Woody’ meme! (Google search at your own risk, btw):

I trust Bernard will post a good close up photo of Woody 🙂

That’s Enoshima island, which is as beautiful as we remembered. We slowly made our way up the island, and Bernard and I went to the top of the Sea Candle tower for a panoramic view:

And then… the rains came! Finally, the two (B was paying me to carry his…) umbrellas I had carried for 5 hours came in useful! On the top of the island, without climbing down the other side to see the dragon cave, we started the long, wet trek back:

Timelapse

May 13, 2013

Remember in yesterdays post when I mentioned making a timelapse video of the camera photos? Well I did something clever:

That’s about half of the photos compiled into a timelapse video! About 6 days separates the first and last shot.

Toward the end you can see two frames of a furry rogue being very close to the camera! Very shortly after those photos the camera was knocked over, which is why the viewing angle changes afterwards 🙂

We Live With Animals!

May 12, 2013

Ok fellows, time again for some candid camera backyard snaps! This entry is a good one…

Firstly, I set the camera up leaning against our house looking directly in the backyard onto the grass. I left it there for a few days and… almost no animal photos! However, by sheer coincidence our backyard neighbour was having a tree removed during this period and the entire process was captured in about 300 photos 🙂

Interesting… but not furry! However this next one – one of the very few animal shots captured during that period, is most definitely interesting:

Now I’m no zoologist, but that to me looks like either:
a) A bear
b) A cougar
c) A thylacine
Sadly, with no further photos of the mysterious beast, accurate identification may remain elusive.

I then moved the camera, placing it on the patio angled toward the tree you see in the right side of the above pictures. Here was the new vista when moved:

This was a good spot! It seems this little tree sits atop a backyard highway, since over the next few days many types of beast wandered into shot. I’ll not show the usual suspects (squirrels, birds) and focus on two visitors.

Here’s a rabbit hopping into view:

And here, my friends, is an up-until-now elusive opossum:

Look at that ratty tail and pointed snout. Could this be the same guy I saw with my own eyes years ago?

Now we cut to about a week later (ignore the date stamp on the photos; I never bother to set it when). For Christmas we received a brand new squirrel feeder. It is a wheel on an axel that rotates freely and has place to put three corn cobs. In addition, I purchased a different feeder myself, which hangs a food block off a spring. About two weeks ago we installed these and set a camera on them. Here’s an establishing shot:

300 photos would be captured in this spot, about 90% of them containing squirrels making use of their feeders. Here’s two examples:

The photos not containing squirrels fall into two categories:
1) Night photos, that almost always contain only deer, and
2) Photos of birds

Here is a night example:

And here is a bird example:

That’s a bluejay. We have yet to see any squirrels attempt to feed from the new hanging feeder (as opposed to the corncob feeder hanging behind it). I think it may be too far from the branch.

By the way, compare the lushness of the greenery in the above shot to the establishing shot above. Only six days separate the two. Next year I should do a timelapse in early spring to show the growth of the trees and ferns.

Now we get to the good stuff, as in the really good stuff. I also moved the camera to look directly at the rotating feeder, and switched it over to video mode. It was set to record 30 second clips, and during the very first night hit the jackpot. Here are four such clips edited together:

Yes, that’s a raccoon! Possibly the same guy we captured in a photo a few weeks back. According to the timestamps, he was there for about 14 minutes in total. Cute little bugger, isn’t he? 🙂

So the list is squirrels, chipmunks, deer, birds, cats, rabbits, opossum and raccoons that we have caught on our cameras over the years. We know of three other mammals we know to visit our backyard that have still not been captured on film. Will I ever see them? Can you guess what they are?