Tag: telescope

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Branston started to open one of the barn doors about…

Branston started to open one of the barn doors about the same time as Bliss started getting out of the field, to join the older Horses. The door bolt was designed in a way that you would think would be impossible to be opened by an animal. I should think that the previous farmer at Denbury, had his dairy cows knocking the bolt open, or sliding the bolt with their tongue. The bolt has been designed so that you need to pull it out before you are able to slide it across, and Branston has managed to do just that. At first we blamed each other for leaving the door open. I was only when we were making the feed up one day, and Branston started to open the door in front of us, did we realise that he was opening the door. For Branston it serves two purposes when he open the door. One he is able to get to the feed, the second he is able to walk through the barn, to an opening that let him out to get to the other Horses. He is pretty slick at opening it. It is only four or five steps from the door to where we make the feed up. Before we can get back to doing the feed after he has opened it, he manages to open it again. We now have to tie the barn doors to stop him.

There are only two Duckling left on the lake. Some of you probably saw them sitting on the sacks with their mother. They have survived for two weeks. That is longer than any from the previous clutch. I know that a lot of the Rats have gone. I moved the cage with the poison in, over a week ago back to the lake. The poison is still being taken, but not as much as when I first moved it. The weather has been dreadful for the Duckling. The first day that I saw them was on the morning of the flood. I should think that some of them have died for other reason than being taken by predators.

The last Swallows nest that we put a camera on, is up at the top of the apex of the roof in one of the barns. The roof is a corrugated metal roof. Yesterday was very warm for a change. The tin roof would have got very hot and it would have been very hot at the apex. The chicks did look as if they were gasping because of the heat. It is very high where the nest has been built. The nestlings are looking over the side of the nest as if they know it, and they don’t look particularly happy.

Yes Jill, the Telescope is all ready other that setting it up with the stars for alignment, with the Skyscout that was sent to me from the US. Unfortunately the weather other than yesterday has been to bad to have it going. Although it is in an observatory, I cant take the chance that it may get wet. I have a very good Solar telescope attached to the main telescope. I would put that on in the day if it was going to stay dry. But I need to set the main telescope up first so that the telescope tracks the Sun as it is moving. With the Solar telescope you can sometimes see flares and sunspots, that I gather are very interesting to Astronomers. As soon as it is possible I will put the telescope on. What we have done with broadcasting of the Solar System over the web has never done before. When we have had it going it has been very good.

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It looks as if I was wrong about the Swallows…

It looks as if I was wrong about the Swallows nest that has been built on an electric junction box. This morning there was half of an egg shell on the side of the nest, and the way that the adult has been acting there could well be chicks in the nest. If the adult leaves the nest I will take a look and let you know.

Most of the day I have spent renewing the digital recorder on the camera system. The one that was installed had a small harddrive and was difficult to download to disc, although it had an inbuilt recorder, The new DVR is a bit of a posh affair, and it could well be that I will have difficulty learning how to work it, but I will have time as it has a very large hard drive installed. I have a couple of hardrives that I have had to take out of previous recorders, that has some good material on them. Last year I managed to record a Badger mating session, I am told that it has never been recorded before. If that is true or not, I don’t know. Renewing the recorder has given me the opportunity to tidy up the whole camera control system, that takes up a largish area in our kitchen. I wouldn’t be the tidiest person in the world, so the area I use gets larger and larger, until I am nearly taking over more than half of the worktop area, with computers, controllers, monitors and there is so much wiring you would not believe. Fortunately we have a very large kitchen. Hopefully this will sort me out. And with luck, but don’t keep me to it, we may be able to show events that many of you have missed. As tonight one of you saw a Kingfisher by the feeders. I take it who ever saw it, that it was on camera two? Let me know.

Although the skies were not so clear that I would have been able to put the telescope on, I was able to try out the piece of equipment that I got from the US. I became an instant Astronomer. My knowledge of the sky when I first purchased the telescope, was zero. I knew the Sun and Moon, and truly that was it. We met an extremely good Astronomers, who came to dinner and showed us different stars and constellation. Most I remembered, but many I forgot. When we do the Astronomy holidays, he will do talks to our guests. The piece of equipment is called a SkyScout. It works in two ways, the first is that through the view finder you point it to any object in the sky, press a button and instantly it tells you what it is. The second way is that you have a choice to locate, by pressing another button, you scroll down the list and select. Again you use the view finder, that has arrowed LEDs to direct you to the object, that you have selected, when the object is found all of the directional LEDs flash. It can Locate over 6,000 stars, planets and constellations from its built-in celestial database and provides scientific information for each object, It also has audio to give descriptions of objects, and every night a tonight’s highlights. A list of the 20 best objects to view for your exact date, time and location, anywhere in the world. Clever is not the word. Within a month or so the manufacturer of the telescope I use are bringing out the own version. It has a much larger database and I will be able to plug it into the telescopes computer, point it to an object, and the telescope will go to that object automatically. Hopefully I will now get the telescope working as it should.

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Thank you all in the USA who offered me an…

Thank you all in the USA, who offered me an address for the SkyScout. I really do appreciate you offers of help. Strange thing is that Susan the person who is going to do it for me, is from Taunton, and moved to the US many years ago. Susan Brother still lives in Taunton, about five miles from the farm. I am able to send the shipping cost to him. I have ordered the piece of equipment. As soon as I get it, I will be able to get the tracking for the Telescope more precise, and hopefully I will be able to show different parts of the Solar System, other than the Moon.

The Telescope is a very large 14″ Meade, that once set up correctly, is able to track what ever it has been set up to watch, it uses GPS. We have had to motorise the Observatory Dome, so that it is able to move around automatically in time with the Telescope. It caused us a few headaches to work out how to do it. When we finished it, it worked very well. Using Microsoft remote desktop, we are also able to control the telescope from the farm house. In fact it can be controlled from anywhere in the world. At times we lose the object that the Telescope is following, once we get the SkyScout it will happen less. But when it does, we sometimes have a bit of a job finding it remotely, and I have to go up to the Observatory. It is bout 150m from the farmhouse and uphill at that. In the winter it is a job you really don’t want to be doing.

Another of the Swallows was gone this morning. There is another nest next to the one that has the chicks in, it is a lot larger and there would have been less of a chance of the chicks falling out. I have put up a board under the nest, I don’t know if it will help if another one fall out of the nest.

A couple of you have noticed that the Osprey nest web cam, now has sound. We sent the eqiupement up to the Lock of the Lowe’s Centre a couple of days ago, it was fitted yesterday. What an improvement it has made. I have been considering for a long time now, about having sound around the Badger sett. I must admit that I am a little concerned about what may be heard by those watching. I am going to put at least one more camera around the sett, probably on the entrance. I may then try sound, and see how it goes.

After baiting up the cage with bread for the past few days, tonight is the first night we are going to try to get rid of the Rats around the lake. For the past few days we have seen the Rats going into the cage. Tonight we have put into the cage a container with the poison in. They may not take it tonight. They will in a couple of days.

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As I thought it may the Buzzard returned this evening…

As I thought it may, the Buzzard returned this evening, landing on the Bird Feeders ready to swoop on an unsuspecting Rabbit. The way that it flew down shortly after landing, it could well have caught one. That particular feeder is a good vantage point to face the camera. You can regularly see Rabbit and Pheasants in the background. For the past couple of days a Fox has been turning up in the morning, eating the sunflower hearts, that I scatter around the path to encourage the Pheasants, so that they are able to be seen on the camera.

For the past two or three days, the Fish in the lake has been spawning. I managed to catch a few of them on camera this morning. It seemed a bit frenzied, with what seemed like quite a lot of males chasing a female, trying to fertilize her eggs. When I walked around the Lake a little later, there were a lot of Fish in the reeds by the bank of the lake, spawning in the shallow water. It is when spawning in shallow water that the fish are vulnerable to the Herons. The Heron will not be able to eat the large Fish, but will pierce the Fish, that causes injuries and can kill the fish.. Needless to say that Herons are not my favorite bird.

I forgot to mention, that whilst we were at The Somerset Wildlife Trusts, Fyne Court site we heard our first Cuckoo. We have not heard any on the farm this year, I should think that by now if there had been any, we would have heard them by now. We also have not heard or seen any Tawney Owls for a while. We have two Tawney Owl nest boxes down the valley. You may have wondered if you have watched the valley camera, why I sometimes scan the trees on the left side. Very often last year I would catch the Owls eyes in the infra red lights. A number of those watching the Badger Camera last year, also saw a Tawney Owl swoop down to catch a Rat or Vole. I am sure if any of you had seen it recently, you would have posted it on the forum.

I managed to get the Telescope into the Observatory earlier in the week, today I have started to put the bits and pieces on that make it turn automatically. There is also the smaller Telescope and Solar Telescope to fit. The Moon is about at the moment, if I get the Telescope ready I will show it on camera. With the weather forecast that I heard tonight, it may not be until next week.

I managed to speak to a person who manages the wildlife, for one of the organisations that we are hoping to host their web cams, on the WBC site. We are going to discuss it further tomorrow. All I can say at the moment is that it looks promising. I also spoke to the other site last week. We are going to speak further in a couple of weeks time. They are interested, but they have a couple of issues that need to be discussed internally

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As you have probably noticed we are continually looking for…

As you have probably noticed, we are continually looking for new sites and organisations for which we can host wildlife web cams. With that in mind, today we had a meeting with a representative of The Somerset Wildlife Trust at Fyne Court, a National Trust property, that The Somerset Wildlife Trust manage. It is only a short distance from the farm. If you are ever in the area, it is well worth a visit.

We discussed with the Trust various locations that may be suitable for web cams. Over the next week we plan to visit two of the sites. Westhay Moor National Nature Reserve and Catcott Lows and Catcott Heath that are very close to each other. WestHay Moor on the Somerset Levels and is recognised as one of Britains top bird watching locations. It is often featured in documentaries and BBC’s Springwatch. One of the biggest attractions is the arrival in the Autumn of several million Starlings, that fill the sky as they arrive to roost in the reeds each afternoon, before dusk, Their synchronized display before they roost is breath taking. If we can get an electricity supply and a broadband connection, we could be broadcasting from the site very soon. From the site you get many different types of wildlife throughout the year. This is NOT the site that I have not told you about.

I also made telephone contact with two other organisations that we will be talking to about hosting their web cams, both are very exciting and would make great viewing. One is going to look for potentials sites over the coming days. I will tell you who they are even if we are unsuccessful in attracting them to our site.

Woody had a bad night last night, you may have seen Lady and the Foals moving around their stable and Woody’s legs going in different directions, I just caught the end of it and saw her up, soon after. She got cast, and was unable to get up as she had laid down in an awkward position, she must have been stuck for a while as the walls of her stable were very scuffed. This morning we had to give her pain killers, again you may have seen her walking aimlessly around the field. She eventually laid down. The pain killers did not take to long to work, but she was not on her feet until this afternoon.

The Geese returned to the lake again today, I phoned Rye Harbour to ask what chance there was that the Geese would lay another clutch of eggs. Barry wasn’t to hopeful, as it was late in the nesting season of Geese.

We managed to get the Telescope in the observatory this afternoon. There were two workmen on the farm and I managed to convince them to help me. The Telescope is a research grade telescope that many Universities use and many others would like to have. It is going to take me a little while put all the accessories on to the telescope and get the dome automation reset. We will be broadcasting with it soon.