In 2022, I found myself spending less time with birds and more time with another hobby. After finishing my Esperanza cross-stitch, I started an even bigger design for Rich. We have a big anniversary coming up, and we have an empty wall in the family room that needs more turtles! When I began this project in March, I had no idea how much I would enjoy it. :)
The original artwork for this image was a puzzle by Sherry Vintson. I adapted the picture to a cross-stitch design. It’s a 182,000 stitch full coverage piece that I did on 25-count Easy Grid fabric. Yep, 25-count means 25 stitches per inch. Rich calls this “high definition cross-stitch”. It’s so much fun!!!
Turtle Hatchlings Cross-stitch
I took a picture every time I completed another 1% of the design. Then I stitched the images together to make a time lapse video. It’s like a scrapbook because I can always remember what I was doing when I stitched each part.
I completed the final stitches on New Year’s Eve. Rich and I stared at my masterpiece for a long time. Then he said “It’s amazing. Now you get to do it again. I want one for my office for my birthday!”
Um, I think the only suitable response is “Yes dear!”
How can anybody cross-stitch without a cat on her stomach?
This year Santa brought my mom a video camera for her bird feeder, and the verdict is in: it’s awesome! My dad set up the camera next to the busiest hummingbird feeder, which has been busier than usual with this week’s cold snap. So now my mom gets a notification every time her hummingbirds come to visit! She’s getting these neat videos with all sorts of wing positions. We zoomed in the video and slowed down the clips a little to see if one of the birds is banded. So far it’s hard to say, so we’re trying again tomorrow with a better video quality. Hummingbird bander Fred Bassett will be back in town soon, and we’re hoping he will make time to visit us again, especially since I didn’t get to see him last year. Actually, my dad has the biggest vision for this camera: to resight the Rufous he saw a few weeks ago!! :)
Here’s another video with some more clips. This time we caught her male hummingbird with his bright red gorget. Turn up your sound and listen. You can hear the chatter of the birds and the buzz of their wings! Watch the last clip closely – the male is nectaring, then he gets chased off by another hummer!
This year Santa brought my mom a special present – a security camera turned into a birdcam so that she can watch her birds from the comfort of her living room.
As Santa’s elf, my job was to research several birdcam options, including various cameras sporting artificial intelligence to identify birds. But the Blink Outdoor cameras stood out for their versatility and battery life. Convinced by this awesome blog post, the elves and I set up a test camera in my backyard to evaluate it for my mom.
The verdict? This camera is AMAZING!
We placed it by the birdbath and saw our Painted Buntings up close and personal as they splashed around in the water. I wasn’t sure if the minimum focus distance would be too big, and it wasn’t. I had the camera about 6 inches from the birdbath, and all the birds were focused. Best of all, the motion sensing worked perfectly. Every motion alert I got on my phone coincided with a feathered friend enjoying the birdbath. The beautiful red and green birds gave the videos some special Christmas cheer!
Next we placed the camera on a feeder offering nuts. I mounted it on the shepherd’s crook right behind the feeder. A few minutes later, I was looking at full-frame images of a little Pine Warbler. Wow! On this setup, the motion of the birds landing and leaving from the top of the crook caused both the camera and the feeder to wiggle, resulting in more false positives from the motion sensing. I lowered the sensitivity through the phone app, and it did better. Refining the motion zones helped a lot too. Shifting the camera to a more solid pole virtually eliminated the false alarms again.
We’ve had a female hummingbird hanging out in the backyard since Hurricane Ian, and I wanted to see if the hummer would trigger the motion sensor. Yep, she sure did! First I put the camera near her feeder, and I caught a video of her hovering in front of the camera. When I played back the video on the computer, and slowed down the frame rate, I could see the small red dot starting on her gorget. So apparently “she” is a little boy! Then I moved the camera next to one of his favorite flowering plants. It was a windy day, and the camera alerted me that my usage was high and the batteries might not last the full 2 years. But it was worth it – I got a fun video of the hummer nectaring on a flower, and you could hear the sound of his wings as he zoomed around!
Turns out the hummer isn’t the only one to use the hummingbird feeder. The IR sensor picked up a great little clip of a hummingbird moth buzzing around the feeder at night. Apparently Squirt’s armadillo is still hanging around, too, and we caught his tail disappearing behind the birdbath. All the things you didn’t know were happening right in your own backyard!
I edited my favorite videos together to share. Like all things on this blog, I’m writing about my experience to share with similar-minded people who may be interested in a bird camera. I am not affiliated with Blink. But my mom and I am now a fan of their products!
Test Videos for my mom’s present. The camera is a keeper!
