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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Recent content by Ruff

  1. Ruff

    Any (feasible) way to keep feeders up safely with avian flu around?

    Due to getting suburban squirrels in plague numbers, I've already had to reduce my feeder numbers from 4 down to one-- they were all squirrel proof, spillage was the problem. Anyway, I noticed that birds had stopped coming, even the local chickadees that normally own it, and it occurred to me...
  2. Ruff

    Crow Family Thanks Man Who Helped Them With Tiny Gifts

    [I find this story entirely credible. When crows started visiting my bird bath to soften pieces of dried bread and such, I started putting out some blue marbles for them, based on another story I'd read. As soon as the marbles started disappearing, the crows started leaving little food treats...
  3. Ruff

    Birds don't eat seed after adding pepper

    If you added pepper in powder form, it may be getting into their eyes.
  4. Ruff

    'Building The Perfect Squirrel Proof Birdfeeder'

    Well not quite, I'll just leave this here and say it's well worth a look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=192&v=hFZFjoX2cGg&feature=emb_logo
  5. Ruff

    Bluebirds getting stuck in glassed in feeder

    I've always found that birds accommodate to unfamiliar and even threatening things pretty quickly. I'm sure the bluebird will build confidence in the same way that other birds do when confronted with scarecrows and plastic snakes and models of owls actually intended to keep them away. If nothing...
  6. Ruff

    My new project: Operation Friendship Garden Crow

    For starters, I grew up in a rural culture that was at war with the crows, something mostly based on the belief that they would ruin sweet corn crops but I think mainly based on the general feeling that they were somehow creatures of darkness (Christian memories of Woden's ravens?). The...
  7. Ruff

    No action on Goldfinch feeder loaded with Nyjer - ?

    Some years back I bought a HUGE farm sized bag of nyjer seed from Tractor Supply Co, at least 50 pounds weight or whatever the standard feed size bag of those weighs, I really prefer to forget, and the birds would have nothing to do with it, literally nothing. In the end I gave most of it away...
  8. Ruff

    Vancouver Island fish farmers rescue eagle from octopus

    Bald eagles are probably not a staple of the octopus diet... there's a photo at the link. Vancouver Island fish farmers rescue eagle from octopus Adam Chan Associate Digital Producer VICTORIA -- An island bald eagle was rescued from a watery demise Monday afternoon after workers at Mowi...
  9. Ruff

    site helps identify common feeder birds

    'Feederwatch' site helps identify common feeder birds This new site from Cornell Labs will be great for non-twitchers who have feeders going, unfortunately for North America only at this point...
  10. Ruff

    Night time bird strike mystery

    In the first light of dawn during migration, small dead songbirds are found at the base of the high rise buildings in Ontario, the ones where lights are kept on all night long. They hit the windows as they're migrating at night and are cleaned up in the morning before a lot of people are out and...
  11. Ruff

    Feeders go silent in autumn.

    I see it happening to me. There's a moderate to big increase in numbers as the summer loving resident and migrant birds are both visiting and then there's a lull as they clear out and head south. I always do have a small number of year 'round birds here though, rarely go more than 2 days with no...
  12. Ruff

    How to Squirrel Proof your Bird Feed.

    I found that it's best to find and/or devise ways to exclude SQ access. That ended up involving the purchase of professionally made SQ proof feeders and therefore some capital expenditure spread over a few years, and then improving the designs a bit when the SQs started defeating them, but it's...
  13. Ruff

    Vacation and feeders

    I fill mine and leave, they're mostly all 'controlled access'(exclude squirrels and rock pigeons, etc) so there's often some seed left when I get back. If going away for more than several weeks, let's say for months, I'd bring them in because there's no point in weathering them unnecessarily and...
  14. Ruff

    Feeder visited bt a Bear

    Even if you take down the feeders at night, there is no guarantee they won't visit in the daytime, particularly just before hibernation season where they are building up their fat reserve. I might suggest considering finding ways to suspend feeders in such a way that bears cannot reach them...
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