Giselda - My Varmit-Eating GHO

This year, I decided that I wanted a wide-angle view of my entire colony at night, from a general monitoring viewpoint, allowing me to also see what may be skittering around my yard.  So, Bob did some research and found a reasonably priced Foscam security camera and hooked it up about a week ago.  We've been struggling with the range of the IR (60') and really not wanting to run power out into the yard to get the camera closer to the racks.  In my last post, I also mentioned that I was trying out a motion detection light and thought that may help scare the owl away if he ever came into the colony and triggered it on.  But since 4/18, I hadn't seen the owl and couldn't prove my new tool was working.  In fact, I was beginning to think he was filling up on my neighbor's guineas, whose numbers have gone from 20+ to 3 or 4 now.  I hear they taste like chicken.  That's the word I'm spreading anyway - 'EAT MOR GUINEAS'.
Yesterday (5/18) I pulled my game card cameras for review and found this video date / time stamped at 5/15/2015 -2:35 AM.  It was a bit alarming and given the perspective of the camera, I couldn't tell what mischief  Giselda had been engaged in before she landed on top of that pole.

The videos recorded through the Foscam camera were taking too long to scan, so I hadn't reviewed them in a couple of days and besides, the IR range and lack of illumination issues were bumming me out.  But somehow, on this night, the stars aligned, the winds were perfect, there was no rain, glowing eyes aided in tracking and the lovely glowing cobwebs added just enough annoying creepiness to make the video below quite interesting.  And I now have confirmation that a motion detection light is spectacularly useless in helping to scare a GHO away from your colony.  But it does provide some nice lighting for recording what she's up to.

I've done some cropping in the video to remove a total of almost 4 minutes of the owl turning his head away, because you really can't see anything when his glowing eyes are not looking towards the camera.  I also removed the first 2 minutes of the video where he entered stage-right, landing on the ground about 15' west of the most west rack.  I saw his glowing eyes through the noise on that side of the frame and thought for a bit that it must be a cat, a racoon or a coyote.  That is, until I got to the 2:23 minute mark and all doubt was removed - (at the 2:23 minute mark - watch the top of the leftmost gourd rack).  You have to watch the video at full-screen and watch along the right hand side - you'll see his glowing eyes periodically and her movement as she apparently glides (I don't think a GHO would run) along the ground.

This video served to provide me with a lot of relief - JOY!  Apparently, on this night anyway, she wasn't there to hunt for martins.  She was there chasing or hunting voles, moles, mice or snakes that were creeping along the ground.  Whew!  What a relief!  She can have all those varmits that she can catch!  That $79 camera just paid for itself in saving me a lot of worry & sleepless nights.  For now, my guards are still working and she seems to be ignoring us.
So, new plan - I'm putting my scarecrow back in the yard (she was inside that night, due to expected rain) and we're installing bright spotlights that will aid in video monitoring.  Enough fooling around.  The cages are working - I just need to know what she's doing.  Maybe "want to know" is a better description.
Sssssshhhhhhh, be very, very quiet, my lovely darlings, for ye know not what lurks beneath.  Or above.