Monitoring Your Purple Martin Colony With Game Cameras - A Browning Trail Camera Review

Last year I learned a hard lesson.  Never say, "never" when it comes to owls, snakes, racoons, and other predators that could prey on your purple martins.  Never.  As I learned, you don't really know what's going on with your purple martin colony unless you are either sitting outside all night or you have positioned multiple game cameras around your site.  If you ignore the possibility, then you could end up with lots of dead martins and even lose your entire colony.
Sitting in my yard all night was just not realistic for me, so I chose the latter option.   I quickly shopped for game cameras after noticing that my Trendsetter was not filling up like it had in years past and finding a GHO feather in my driveway escalated my sense of urgency.  After reading the reviews for multiple brands and shootout results (good site to see all trail camera reviews here), I decided to try out a Browning Trail Camera - Recon Force XR Series (BTC-2XR).  It has some nice features, including long detection range and the ability to record video.
My purple martin gourd rack - 7-2-2014- 8:20 PM.

My first impression when I opened the box is that the camera is small and compact and the casing has a high-quality, heavy duty plastic feel.  My second impression was, "whoa - this takes a LOT (8) of batteries!".

The Recon Trail Camera User Interface

After loading it with batteries and an SD card, I was able to poke around the very user-friendly buttons and quickly setup the date and time.  I had read about all the features while shopping, but I hadn't realized there were features within features.  Read on to see what features I find most attractive in this game camera.
Features
The camera has 4 capture modes: Trail Cam, TimeLapse, TimeLapse+ and Video Mode.
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Wild Kingdom Right Here on Gobbler's Knob

As a child, every Sunday, my brother, sisters and I eagerly gathered around our tv to watch "Wild Kingdom" with Marlin Perkins telling us of some exotic, fierce animal in a far away land and what they did to survive.  Sometimes, it was brutal and it was always exciting.  Well that wild kingdom is no longer in a faraway land for me.  It's in my own backyard.  We have worked for 8.5 years to make our little piece of heaven a safe haven for wildlife by building brush piles and planting native plants that provide food, habitat and cover for them. 

Rabbits are drawn to the sweet crimson clover that blossoms during the spring and they sometimes forget how exposed they are while munching on the beautiful flowers.

Quail, turkey, a wide variety of other birds, reptiles (snakes, turtles, etc.), skunks, rabbits, squirrels, and possums, just to name a few, enjoy life here with us on Gobbler's Knob.  That variety of wildlife also brings in the inevitable predators - owls, hawks, coyotes and foxes - that prey upon them and I love them as much as I love the wildlife. 

A leucistic Northern Harrier snags a mole for his lunch.

The sheer rawness of wild animals hunting, stalking, chasing, creeping about and finally pouncing upon their prey is exhilarating, breathtaking and exciting to me.  But we don't make it easy for the predators.  We have given the prey ample opportunity for escape and avoidance.  They have plenty of brush piles to escape into, lots of natural cover in which they can camouflage themselves and their survival is totally dependent on how or whether they learn to use those tools to their advantage.  It's not just survival of the fittest, it's also survival of the smartest.

A Red-Shouldered Hawk waits patiently as it scans the field for signs of movement indicating a tasty morsel is about to make a fatal error.

Five weeks ago, I decided to deploy my game cameras around the property so I could catch a glimpse into their nightly activities.  The results have been more rewarding than what I could have hoped for.
These stealthy, beautiful creatures of the night help control our voles, moles, snakes, mice, free-roaming cats, ground hogs (which can quickly become a nuisance and very destructive to pond banks in Missouri), and many other animals here.  Yes, they eat the quail, turkey and our other desirables too, but I can accept a native predator doing its thing in order to survive. 
I always get excited when I see the late night and early morning timestamps on the cards, because I know I'm about to see a visitor that I would have never known about, without the use of these cameras. 

I find it very interesting that some of our 4-legged predators like to travel the same paths around our property which we have carved with our 4-wheelers.  In the first video below, a coyote walks across the trail, moving away from one of the brush piles that has a deep hole burrowed out beneath it.  I would love to know what is or what was living under there at one time and if the coyote caught whatever it was.

Interestingly, on the same night within 15 minutes, on the north trail, a fox can be seen sniffing around.  Ironically, I have another video of Nikki and Bob walking this same trail the next day and Nikki's hackles on her back are standing up.  She knew that he / she had been there the night before - she always seems to know.

And what looks to be the same fox comes through again the next night.

Today, it is 18 degrees with snow flurries and it is supposed to get colder this week.  I've cleared the cards and made sure the batteries are good on the game cameras.  I'll check them again in a few days to see what our friends have been up to.  Yeah, we're digging life here on Gobbler's Knob, bringing the Wild Kingdom right up to our back door steps.

The Wisdom of The Swing

Sometimes I tend to over think things, but not near as much as my husband does.  He was concerned about conducting a prescribed burn on 3 acres just south of the house this year because of the potential for killing the young, tender sprouts of the new native wildflowers we'd planted, so he decided to find a used hay rake and rake off all the duff instead of burning this year.  He finally found one and, after replacing the missing teeth on it, we made it fully functional. 

Looking at it brought back many memories from my childhood.  As a small child, I vividly remember chasing my Grandfather (PawPaw) across the field and trying to deliver his lunch that my Mawmaw had prepared for him as he cut and raked the hay on the farm.

MawMaw & PawPaw Pippin - circa 1970-72

Later, when I learned to ride a horse, I would run into the field and catch "Red" (the name of my horse at the time) and with nothing more than hay baling twine as a bridle, I would find a stump, jump up on his back and ride out to my Grandfather and deliver his lunch as he mowed then raked, season after season.  Funny how an inanimate object can bring forth such vivid memories isn't it?  I miss them both - they were strong, driving forces in my life.  As my Mother and Father divorced and the battle raged, MawMaw and PawPaw were the one constant in our lives.
MawMaw was a devout Christian - a member of the local United Pentecostal church and used to take my sister, my brother and me to church every Saturday night, Sunday School on Sunday morning and if we were still there at her house on Sunday evening , we went to church that night too. Bible School was the best though - peanut butter and jelly crackers and lots of arts and crafts kept us busy for a whole week during the summer.

Kathy, Karen and Clint - circa 1968

PawPaw on the other hand, whoooo boy!  PawPaw was a moonshiner and a gambler.  I remember the story of his cooking moonshine out in the woods and the time his still was trampled by cows.  He and my father had gotten word that the local sheriff knew where their still was and was forming up a posse to destroy it and arrest him.  When PawPaw and my father got to the still, they found several cows laying around the area, sprawled out on their sides with their eyes rolling back in their heads.  Apparently, they had decided to have a taste of the moonshine and had broken up the barrels in their eagerness to drink the stuff.  There was not much they could do for the cows, so they hauled the equipment away -they never were arrested for it.
My grandfather was also a troublemaker.  And a brawler.  He loved to fight, especially with his own kin.  You know that meme, "nature or nurture"?  Well, I was never sure if I inherited his personality or if he nurtured it, but for many years, I was his favorite grandchild and he kept me close.  I learned my multiplication tables and ABCs at his knee, early every morning when he was drinking his coffee, preparing to go to work.  During the winters, I would learn in front of the fireplace.  But in summer, we would take to the swing - back & forth, with my legs dangling, not quite able to reach the floor, he would swing us at his chosen pace and make me recite until time to leave for work.  The thing I learned from him that I thank him for every day is my ability to be honest with my friends.
Once when I was in high school I sat on the swing with him and cried my heart out.  I was devastated that I didn't have a lot of friends and while I knew the reason, I couldn't figure out how to change it.  I was too honest with my friends, sometimes to the point of being brutal.
PawPaw listened, then told me, "Always be honest with your friends.  If they leave you, they weren't worth keeping around.  If they stay, they are your true friends."  That has stuck with me always. 

Me & PawPaw - 1989 - he moved his swing out into the yard.

There were many, many more such visits with PawPaw and he would always listen patiently as I told him of my teenage woes and, after having my own children, he shared the wisdom of the swing with them too.

PawPaw and my son, Shiloh - circa 1988. Shiloh was a handful, but PawPaw knew just how to handle him.

Now, as an adult, I sometimes wish he were still here so that we could sit on that swing and he could soothe all my troubles away. There was always so much wisdom shared on that old swing.

PawPaw - 1989

All this from an old, used rake we purchased.  The original intent of this post was to tell you about the pale purple coneflower, prairie blazing star, purple praire clover, common milkweed, New England Aster, rough Blazing Star, Aromatic Aster and Ohio Horsemint that I planted after raking over 5 acres in our field the last two weekends, but I ended up instead on Memory Lane and suddenly, that seems such a minor thing right now.  Funny how that happens.  I miss you MawMaw and PawPaw.

The FOB - Part 2

Now that I'm on vacation this week, the continuation of building the FOB has been my highest priority.  I do not want to wait until March and have to be doing this out in the snow!
As mentioned in my last post (http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-freeze-owl-block-fob.html ), I had cut a couple of 18" arms to which I could test-mount the fencing.  It worked, so this past weekend, (and after sending Mr. Freeze back to the hardware store to get the right size nuts that I needed), I was able to cut and drill the rest of the arms and mount them to the gourd rack.
I then remounted all the gourd arms and made sure the nuts were tightened down so the arms would not rotate and allow the gourd to tilt downward.

The extra 18" angle arms are added to help extend and keep the fencing off the fronts of the gourds on the ends.  Holes drilled in the end of each 18" piece will be used to secure the fencing.

I then mounted the 6' aluminum angle arms between the main arms and carefully measured where I would drill the holes that would allow me to mount those without having to cut more metal, yet it would sit securely on the ends without slipping off.  Okay, I lied - I don't "measure carefully" unless Mr. Freeze insists that I need to.  And he said I didn't really need to, so I didn't.  I SWAGged it and it worked out.  I drilled a hole on each end of each arm and mounted them, butting one against the other.

The 4, 6' aluminum angle pieces are strapped down using zipties after drilling a hole in each end.  The pie-shaped top for this section was cut so that there would be no jagged edges.  They may overlap with the next piece a bit, but that's ok.  I'll also cut some 4"x4" holes in the top.

Right now, everything is secured using zip ties to ensure the design will work.  I haven't decided yet what the permanent solution will be.  I want to put this baby into practice and see what or if I will need to change something to accommodate my propensity to move quickly when doing nest checks while at the same time, not having to brush against mite-infested gourds.
I had been dreading facing two other challenges - figuring out how to get the maximum coverage from above without having to do a lot of cutting and what to use to cover the 'nibbins' when I cut out 4"x4" squares.  Today, the clouds parted and it all became clear.  Once I realized that I needed a 45 degree -pie-shaped section of fence and to do that, I needed to "cut two across, down one", I tossed the ruler, the square and the angle-thingy that Mr. Freeze gave me and started cutting.  I now have a roof over the top that will prevent the owl from dropping down inside the cage.  And I can secure it to the 6' angle arms, that I mounted earlier to keep it from floppin' around.

As for the covers of the nibbins in the newly cut 4"x4" openings, I have Mr. John Barrow to thank for that idea.  I am not ashamed to say that yes, I consult with a lot of friends to 'brainstorm' when I don't have a clue how to proceed.  John sent me some suggestions and armed with that information, I went to our local hardware store.  After the laughter died down from my trying to explain what I needed, they helped me find exactly the right material - easy to cut and cheap!  This trim is used to help start siding - commonly called "undersill trim".  I cut out a piece to try it and it snaps right on.  The best part is it doesn't try to rotate or pop off!  My hardware store sold me a 6' length for $2.50.  Yep, nothing like shopping "local"!  Thanks, John!

I have lots more cutting and some fine-tuning to do and I need another roll of the wire to finish, but basically, this is what my purple martins will return home to.  I'm only now starting to feel a lot better about their return next year.

Fall Treasure Hunts

“But then fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”
― Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot'

I love Fall.  There is just no other way to say it.  It is my favorite season.  As Stephen King notes, summer is treacherous.  Drought, heat, painful sunburns, ticks and chiggers, dry & crunchy grass, and bugs that look like they're from alien planets.  Did I mention that I really hate ticks and chiggers?  Don't get me wrong.  Summer brings with it lots of good things too - many different flowers, butterflies, bees and of course, my favorite birds, purple martins.
But there's nothing like Fall - not too hot, not too cold - it's just right!  Unlike the quickening we feel in Spring, Fall brings a feeling of a slowing pace.  It feels as if we have reached the end of this year's marathon race and now it's time to catch our breath, clean up the mess that was summer and prepare to tuck everything into bed for its winter's rest.  One of my favorite activities in the fall is to take a stroll down dirt roads and wander off through the trees to see what summer has wrought.  Where once stood bushes and briars covered with spiders, ticks and chiggers standing guard with their nasty bites as their weapons, waiting to leap upon their prey and leave behind bites that wouldn't heal for months, there are now dead leaves and cold, dead grass.  It is exciting to take in the colorful beauty of the leaves on the trees even as they are slowly dropping off.  The varieties of colors against a clear blue sky give me pause and I love to stand and listen to them rustling in the wind and take a deep breath of the cool, clean air.

Often times, people are oblivious to things that are happening in the forest as they zip to and fro down the highways and back roads around this county.  So, I feel like I’m harboring an exciting secret as I venture forth on a hike with Nikki through the woods, as if we are adventurers and we’re off to discover great secrets hidden in the deep, dark forests.  Well, it may not be “Indiana Jones” type adventures, but it is still quite exciting for us to find the unusual things that we come across in the forests.
This tree died long ago from possibly a lightning strike and Nikki and I stop to watch the opening to see if there are any creatures taking advantage of the large opening through the middle of the trunk.

The growth on the side of this tree is so oddly shaped, it deserves further inspection and the zoom lens.  Now, what in the world could have caused such an oddly shaped growth?

It looks to be perfect for a future home for some creature.  A bit of work to remove the rest of the dead debris and an enterprising, ambitious squirrel or bluejay could make a nice nest site out of it.  It even has a nice view of the nearby road.

Nikki sniffs out our next treasure.  This is her most preferred type of dog walk - one where she is allowed to stick her nose to the ground and follow every scent in Texas County.  If I let her off leash, she would eventually get lost because she, much as a hound, follows her nose everywhere.

And her find is a doozy.  A tree trunk twisted by some violent, incredibly strong force and rotted down the middle.  

 It's fun to ponder what must have happened to this tree. A tornado, perhaps?

But the hunt isn't over yet.  There are more treasures that my guide must sniff out!

Back on our own property, this mulberry is one of my favorites.  It was unfortunately (mulberries like full sun, but do okay with partial sun) planted by a bird, likely perched on the branches of the nearby oak under many other big trees.  Its limbs desperately reach for the sun, just at the edge of the savanna. 

After trimming this Easter red cedar tree, we noticed that someone had been very busy keeping the bugs under control.  Our likely bug hunter is either our very sweet little Downy woodpecker or our Yellow-bellied woodpecker pair.  They left some very interesting patterns too!

 Lastly, my river birch with its peeling bark of many colors.  Dolly Parton had a coat of many colors.  Well, so does my river birch!  I love these trees.  The trunk is as smooth as a baby's butt and the different colors of peeling bark add to its interest.

Here in the mid-west, fall is over as of this writing.  It seems that every year, things change in our natural environment.  I'm finding that I'm changing with it too.  I'm noticing these types of things more often and I find that walks in the woods have a strange, deeply calming effect on my soul.  I'll be doing more of it this winter when the snows fall and create another entirely different world.  One that still has no ticks or chiggers.

My Yellow-Bellied Pirates

Yes, I have pirates in my yard, in the middle of Missouri.  Thieven' little scoundrels, that's what they are!  Today, I went to gather some pale purple coneflower seeds and found I was almost too late to the party.  As I identified the first coneflower head from wince I could harvest seed, my eyes, now-trained-for-finding-coneflower-seed heads, scanned the field, looking for more.  I waded deeper into the weeds and wondered why I wasn't finding more seed heads.

I listened as my ever-present Goldfinches twittered overhead and finally landed in the nearby oak trees, noisily letting me know they were not happy about my presence in their favorite feeding area.
Then I slowly put two and two together.  The reason I have less coneflower seed is because of the flying, yellow thieves that were chiding me from the safety of the trees!
My friend Aya Katz, defines "pirates / piracy" in this article (http://theodosiaandthepirates.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-karankawa-indians.html ) as:  

This brings us back to the meaning of piracy. Piracy would mean preying on your own. Privateering means preying on enemy ships. The whole difference between the two is where you draw the circle. If the Spanish are your allies, then preying on them is piracy. If they are your legally acknowledged enemies, it is privateering.

I am the goldfinches' ally and they are taking advantage of my goodwill (and my seeds) and committing piracy!  Yeeaarrrggghhhh!!!  There is a plentiful bounty of rattlesnake master and prairie blazing star seeds to satiate the Goldfinches so I don't feel badly about confiscating the coneflower seed heads.

 

I was able to find a few seed heads and I quickly cut them off and moved them to a safer location so that I can break the seeds loose and redistribute them this winter.  Of course, if you examine these seed heads closely, you really do have to admire the skill that it takes to get the seeds out without poking their little eyes out!

Harvested seed

The Freeze Owl Block (FOB)

Finally!  For a couple months now, the weather has been too hot to go out and start the cleanup of all the gourds and housing.  This past week has been much cooler and, feeling more secure that the mites and other creepy crawlies have drifted into their winter slumber, I ventured out to start the cleaning process.  With dirty gourds removed, Mr. Freeze is now more willing to help with the implementation of the new owl block whose plan has been changed countless times and under much discussion for months.
Mr. Freeze's 5 points of resistance were:
1. Wind.  Well, we do get lots of it here in Missouri.  My response was, the materials are lightweight and plenty of holes (ie, minimal surface area to catch wind).
2. Weight.  My response was again, the materials are lightweight and it's a 3" pole.
3. Our view.  We bought this property specifically because of its fantastic view to the south and who wants big cages permanently mounted in their direct line of sight?  My response, ok, we won't put them all the way up to the top, permanently mounted.  We can't really reach that high anyway.
4. Cost.  My response was, I've spent a lot of , ahem, a few bucks on these rigs to host purple martins and by comparison, it's not going to be that bad.
5. Why now?  Well, because Mr. Freeze, I don't want to go out in the February / March freezing temps and snow to try to measure & figure out the proper configuration for my racks.  Besides, you don't want to be out there then either, freezing off your wee knees right?
Thanks to Aprils Owl Guard pictures and a few emails back and forth with April, we were able to come up with a plan.  We found aluminum angle iron (36" long and 6' long pieces) at the local Lowe's store and the 2"x4" welded wire fencing (4' high) at our local farm store.
The 36" angle arm pieces were cut to 18" each then marked so they could be drilled to fit the already pre-drilled angle arms.  Since the angle arms are 1/8" thicker, we also purchased more bolts that were 1/8" longer to accommodate both the gourd arm, the original angle arm and the new one in the inner-most hole.  I thought we were being so smart to think of that.  But after drilling all the arms, I realized that I hadn't allowed enough room on the inside / underside of the new angle arm for the nut. So I had to move the small gourd arm to the outside and put the nut on the outside.  I can't think of a reason why that's bad...just aesthetically, it would have been better inside I guess.

2 pieces of fencing temporarily hung to ensure sizing is correct and the gourd won't be too close to the fencing.

The nut would not go on the inside as the hole was too close.  Every other vertical will be cut out to make 4"x4" openings.

Out at the opposite end of the arm, we drilled 2, 1/4" holes just in a bit from the end so that we can run #9 wire through the top and middle of the fencing to stiffen it, then bend the end of the wires downward so they can drop through these holes.  This will also allow me to remove the fence panels if needed during the season.

The #9 wire has not been weaved through the fencing yet.  Hung only temporary here to ensure proper sizing.

Right now, until I see how this is going to work in practice, I also plan to use the full height of the wire fencing - 4', hoping that will help discourage the owl from trying to fly up under it.  Once I wind the gourd rack down, I'll still be inside the cage and since I'm so short, I can move from section to section without removing the panels, unless I really need to.
I'll also be cutting out every other vertical wire to make the holes 4"x4".  I really wish I could find some pre-fabricated wire of that size that is made of this same light-weight material, but my searches have yielded nothing.

The 6' long piece of angle iron at the top will be used for support and to have something to which I can secure the top layer of fencing.

The 4' height of the fence may be too much, but I will leave it for now.

Lastly 4, 6' pieces of angle iron will be added across each set of arms at the top to support the welded wire fencing that will need to be spread across the top of the openings, so that my favorite Great Horned Owl can't just drop in for dinner from above.  Right now, there are no plans to enclose the bottom.  I'll monitor the rack and if he ever does decide to try to fly up into the cage, I'll deal with it then.  My preference though for now is to allow the martins an open bottom through which they can fly out and if the owl lands on top - which I'm sure he probably will - if they do panic & fly out, I don't want to find a bunch of birds hung up in the fencing in the morning.  Construction and ideas continue.  I will post more pictures as it develops.
(see Part 2 here: http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-fob-part-2.html
see Part 3 here: http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-fob-part-3.html)

The top will be enclosed with the fencing.  It will be secured to the 6' length of angle iron.