Thursday, July 26, 2012

Hard at Work

Today I am trying something new. Earlier this week I purchased a small Sony HandyCam, the first camcorder I have owned in my life. I have been experimenting with shooting and uploading videos using iMovie on the Mac. It is not something I plan on doing every day but occasionally I think a video tells a story better than a still photo.

This first example is probably too long - 45 seconds and I have no idea of the quality in this format. It shows the tenacity of a pinyon jay working on a pinecone to get the pine nuts from within. We see a lot of the pinyon jays in the winter months but in the summer they head up in the mountains in search of cooler temperatures and food. The jays and their fellow nut eaters, the Clarks Nutcrackers, come back to our place for a couple weeks in late July/early August to take advantage of earlier harvests. I think they may have miscalculated this year. The pinecones seem very new and sticky still. This fellow in the video obviously found something he could work with. The wind is blowing and the branches are swaying but this fellow holds on for dear life and concentrates on his goal. You can hear other pinyons in the background.

1 comment:

  1. I saw a Northern Flicker do something I've never seen before yesterday. We have Anna's and Rufous hummingbirds here in Portland, and I have two disc-type hummingbird feeders I fill with sugar water. Yesterday a flicker, which is many times larger than a hummer, latched onto the small red feeder and was flicking his tongue in and out of the tiny holes the hummingbirds feed from. It made me wonder where the flicker got the idea there was something in the feeder he would like.

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