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[kitz]

Awww Im too late..   thanks for letting us know though.

[asbokid]

I assure you all my foxes are 100% genuine  (I've used Picasa/Gimp to enhance or reduce the size of some of the static images though)

Hi Ian,

Sorry, I wasn't for a minute suggesting foul play in your amazing images of your wild visitors :-)

You've got a really good webcam there. The one I bought (a Philips egg-shaped thing 640x480@30fps) is nowhere near as good. I was hoping it would catch the filthy sod who let his dog dirty on our doorstep.  Poor quality pictures maybe,  but it did still catch the culprit - it was our Wayne all along! Too lazy to use the bog upstairs!

cheers, a

[asbokid]

Once again the KittyCzar spots all the secrets!  I'm no expert so ignore at pleasure but, imvho, the order of placement in the composition was as below..



cheers, a

[sheddyian]

Sorry, I wasn't for a minute suggesting foul play in your amazing images of your wild visitors :-)

You've got a really good webcam there. The one I bought (a Philips egg-shaped thing 640x480@30fps) is nowhere near as good. I was hoping it would catch the filthy sod who let his dog dirty on our doorstep.  Poor quality pictures maybe,  but it did still catch the culprit - it was our Wayne all along! Too lazy to use the bog upstairs!

I defended in jest, no offence taken.  They are all fake foxes on my webcam, I cut them out of a book, painted them brown, stuck them onto hat pins and move them about every 30 seconds 

If you look at the archive, you will see at the beginning I had an extremely poor quality webcam, I got off Amazon for less than £4, delivered from Hong Kong.  I wasn't expecting much, but it was even worse than I expected it'd be. Truly awful.

The one I'm using now was in a sale in Maplin a few months ago, about £14, native resolution is 800x600 and has manual screw adjust focus, which is exactly what I wanted for the garden.  The fancier autofocus would let me down I think, and fixed focus is likely to be fixed too close to the camera. A nice traditional manual focus was exactly what I wanted, quite pleased with it, though there's always room for improvement 

Ian

[sheddyian]

Awww Im too late..   thanks for letting us know though.

Well, the two nights I've seen them on the cam myself have both been around 9pm BST, so try again tomorrow around then

I need to defeat the seagulls - I put out some tinned dogfood earlier, and the gulls had it all before the foxes smelt it.

(This is away from the camera, and I've already put a garden chair over the bowl, so the seagulls don't spot it from the air. They still found it.)

Ian

[kitz]

OMG...  I just cracked up at your last post about cutting out of a book and painting brown.

Laugh of the day award goes to sheddyian 

>> 9pm BST, so try again tomorrow

I will if Im around

>>> I need to defeat the seagulls

HATE!!!   I call them flying rats.
I caught one in my fishpond earlier, trying to get at my fishes by pulling the netting away and loosening the slack so much that the netting sank below the water.   I have to net the pond not cause I have cats, but because of seagulls.    Guy over the back lost a several of his (largish) koi.

[sevenlayermuddle]

I'd never heard of ELA , but what a fascinating topic.

I'd probably have been fooled by the bluebell pics, except for one thing... that is the sudden and abrupt transition from perfect focus to soft focus, as you compare the bluebells around the fox with those further away.  Camaras may have gone digital, but focus is still a characteristic of the lens, and optics  just don't behave that way. 

As for Ian's webcam... Wow, I want one!  What fantastic pictures.   

[sevenlayermuddle]

HATE!!!   I call them flying rats.

Don't get me started.  We spent a few days at Teignmouth last weekend.  On Sunday, we bought some ice cream cones.  A few paces down the road there was a 'whoosh' of wings, a crunch, and my entire cone had completely vanished from my hand, not a trace to be seen, even on the ground. Apparently the gulls around Torbay and Cornwall (maybe elsewhere?) are now passing this trick on from parent to offspring.

As for the state my nice polished car was in, after a night in the town car park...

[kitz]

Unfort I have to put up with the massive bird poo just about every day..  car..  washing on the line..  windows...  whatever.
Im sure they look for something thats just been washed and is shiny clean .. then they take aim.. fire.   

The ice-cream trick isnt new either, I think my daughter was about 4 or 5 when that happened to her. 
A much older me and kimi went to feed the swans about a month or so ago..  and the seagulls were catching the bread mid-air as we threw it to the ducks.

This time of year they are the worst though..  because they have young fledgling chicks and will attack anything..   they can be really scary..  and will divebomb you.  Ive had one attack the back of my head just walking between my car and front door,  I was lucky it didnt do much damage but local paper report people whom they have drawn blood on.   

[sevenlayermuddle]

Ive had one attack the back of my head just walking between my car and front door,  I was lucky it didnt do much damage but local paper report people whom they have drawn blood on.

 

Around these parts, it's the red kites I worry about.  They were re-introduced in the 90s and now almost as common as pigeons.  And common as they are, we still tend to marvel at them, they're always a spectacular sight.  But the reports of thuggery are becoming more common, just give them time.  Here's one in today's the telegraph that might interest owners of small animals.... 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/petshealth/9228685/Red-Kite-tries-to-fly-off-with-handbag-sized-Pomeranian-toy-dog.html

edit: sorry, that story's a few weeks old in fact.  No matter.

[roseway]

I can understand that people who don't understand the behaviour of wildlife can be frightened by these 'attacks', but there's little doubt that the red kite in that Telegraph article was defending its nest because it felt threatened by the dog. I have to dispute your use of the word 'thuggery' for this normal instinctive behaviour. The 'enormous size' referred to in that article is nearly all wing - the body is quite small and light in weight. It's a shame that the media are so fond of stirring up public fear about such things, but I suppose it sells newspapers.

Red Kites are indigenous to the UK, but were nearly wiped out by the activities of human predators. Their reintroduction has to some extent restored a natural situation which we disturbed. Kites perform a very useful service to all of us in scavenging dead carcases and so helping to keep our world clean and healthy. They enrich our environment at the expense of posing a minor risk to pets which stray into their territory.

There are many wild animals which are dangerous to humans and their pets, and we need to understand them and learn to live with them, instead of demonising them.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Red Kites are indigenous to the UK

As are seagulls I presume, but it doesn't mean that those who live by the seaside have to like them. 

Sorry if I struck a nerve though, point taken. 

[roseway]

Sorry if I struck a nerve though

It was the Telegraph article  (and many others like it) which did that. In fact that particular article did have some balance in it, after the sensationalist stuff in the first few paragraphs. If it had been the Sun, the headline would probably have included the words 'bloodthirsty devil-monster, or something similar.

[sheddyian]

Seagulls aside, I've just put out some more food for the foxes, and already I spy one on the webcam.  (a fox, not a seagull!)

If you want to watch, look over at http://sheddyian.hopto.org

There's also a new slideshow of the foxes visiting from the other day.

Ian

[kitz]

d'oh damnit.  I missed it again.   

Been doing a massive spring clean today cause the weather was ok to put out loads of washing..  and the house got in one of those states where its in chaos as everything is in a right mess..   and totally forgot about the time.   
House is still in a mess.   Do you ever have days when you start something then everything else gets mucked up and you wonder why you started?   Yep thats me today.

Only just sat down to eat!