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Geocaching

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The end of a short story in life…

This afternoon the birdsnest outside my office window has been plundered by a crow or raven. Even though the parent-birds got reinforcement by two other fieldfares they never had a chance.

The small birds only had a few days of life but they somehow enriched my days.

…they just had a few […]

Continue reading The end of a short story in life…

BirdCam – feeding in slow-motion

Because there was a problem with the Raspberry Pi again today, I took the opportunity to film my fieldfares live for a short while. In this slow-motion video you can see how first the female arrives at the nest with a fresh worm. A short while later also the male arrives with a beak […]

Continue reading BirdCam – feeding in slow-motion

Hatching time

“I’m hungry!”

Ten days Mrs Fieldfare has been sitting in her nest – today was the big day: until late afternoon three eggs had hatched. Now also Mr Fieldfare has to show some effort who has not been much around the nest lately.

Mr and Mrs Fieldfare at the nest.

[…]

Continue reading Hatching time

BirdCam v4

It took four attempts to finally get a suitable webcam to observe the bird’s nest outside my office window. Most cheap webcams, even those which show off with true 720p HD resolution simply cannot cope with the different outdoor lighting conditions over a full day.

After a lot of testing and research on the […]

Continue reading BirdCam v4

Setting up webcam exposure under linux

I had some problems with fswebcam to set the automatic exposure. The exact way how to enter certain parameters is not clear from the lacking documentation, but it works fine if you set parameters through another command line tool.

This is the script behind BirdCam:

#!/bin/bash DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M") v4l2-ctl -c exposure_auto=1 v4l2-ctl -c gamma=5 […]

Continue reading Setting up webcam exposure under linux

Fieldfare

Nils Paakkonen was probably right, my new neighbors outside the office window is a pair of Fieldfares.

This morning the whole family was at the nest:

First day with BirdCam

Last Friday I heard some strange noises outside my office window. To my big surprise I then noticed that there was a bird’s nest growing on the window sill. It did not take long until I even saw the new tenant moving in:

Outside my office window…

So far I have […]

Continue reading First day with BirdCam

A bicycle trip: all municipalities in Uppsala county – on a day

There is a geocaching challenge in Uppsala: to visit all 8 municipalities in the county of Uppsala within 24 hours. When I first saw this challenge, I wondered if it was possible to do this by bicycle. I took a map and roughly sketched what would be the shortest possible route to travel to […]

Continue reading A bicycle trip: all municipalities in Uppsala county – on a day

Swedish midsummer flora

Today was the Swedish midsummer eve – and I used the free day for a bicycle ride. Hunting geo-caches also brought me in contact with nature.

Pyrola rotundifolia

A hazelnut forest

Paris quadrifolia

Paris quadrifolia is quite common in the forests around Uppsala.

Paris quadrifolia

Sometimes […]

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The day of the city forrest

Today was the Day of the City Forrest (Stadsskogens dag) here in Uppsala. For everyone who didn’t climb the 180 steps up onto the water tower, here is the view from the top (you will need Apple Quicktime to be installed):