Blue Jay - David Mathre Photography

Thursday (02-December-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Downy Woodpecker, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Northern Mocking Bird, Eastern Bluebird, House Finch, Dark-eyed Junco, Red-winged Blackbird, Northern Cardinal. A flock of birds (tentative) flew into a tree, then left. I haven’t seen a Northern Mocking bird at the birdfeeders for a long time. This one was yelling at the Blue Jays, that were yelling back.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Infrared video of a Possum up close on the patio.

Red Rover time-lapse video. Moving black mulch, used to cover the Daffodil patch, Forsythia, and Lilac shrubs along the west side of the property. Temporary deer fence around the shrubs until the new Deer fence is installed.

Daily Electric Energy Used (53.1 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (14.0 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 39.1 kWh.

Monday (29-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Blue Jay, House Finch.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Little Planet Time-lapse Videos. Continuing to evaluate the LabPano Pilot EE 360 camera. I found that I can do longer shoots using an external USB-C battery pack. It just needs to be one that can do fast charging. The first time-lapse little planet video was changing the AAA batteries in the solar powered Trolls.
Five of the batteries that were removed, wouldn’t take a charge. With the new batteries, three of the Trolls LED lights were on during the day. They are supposed to charge the batteries when it is light out, and only light up when it gets dark out. All but one of the Trolls lights went on when it got dark out, and they were still on at midnight. Will continue to monitor if they continue to charge during the shorter days, and now that the temperature is dropping below freezing every night.

For the next video, the camera was mounted on Red Rover, and on a tripod in the field. Today’s main project was to prepare and seed some of the back sections. A couple of months ago, the sections were fertilized, rototilled, and then covered with black agricultural fabric (to kill germinating weeds). The wildflower seed vendor recommended to sow the seeds after the first few freezes. Apparently, some seeds germinate better if they are out for some time in the cold. (Just hope the birds and mice don’t eat all of the seeds). Today, the black agricultural fabric was removed, the plot leveled with a drag harrow, seeds sowed, then the seeds pressed down with a water-filled drum roller. The LabPano Pilot EE 360 camera was set for a 20x 4K time-lapse video. The white balance and exposure were set to Auto. In the time-lapse video you can see problems with the white balance and exposure. The lighting conditions kept changing from sunny to cloudy.

Daily Electric Energy Used (69.1 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (24.5 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Cloudy and cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 44.6 kWh.

Sunday (28-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, House Finch.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

The Opossum is back.

Little Planet Time-lapse Video. Afternoon on the back patio. Tried to use a chipper to grind up the Canna stalks. Didn’t work, they are too fibrous and still wet jamming the chipper. Continued to clean up the Soft Pots. The second time-lapse video shows troll around the patio fireplace. Recorded with a LabPano Pilot EE 360 camera, and processed with Premiere Pro using the GoPro FX Reframe plugin.

Daily Electric Energy Used (71.5 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (8.7 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Cloudy and cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 62.8 kWh.

Weekly Electric Energy Used (468 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (143 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 325 kWh.

Thursday (25-November-2021) — New Jersey

Happy Thanksgiving.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Blue Jay, Tufted Titmouse.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Continuing to learn how to use the Labpano Pilot EE 360 camera. This time I set it up to record me cooking a duck for my Thanksgiving Dinner. The time-lapse was set for 20x (0.6 seconds/frame) @ 4K (3840 x 1920). The battery ran out at ~99 minutes, even though I had the USB-C connected to an external battery. When I checked online, it appears that the USB-C power source needs to be a USB-PD fast charger. The 4K equirectangular video was processed using Premiere Pro with the GoPro FX Reframe plugin for the rotating Little Planet video. Since the time-lapse video stopped recording before I finished cooking, I’ve provided a still image of the Thanksgiving Roasted Duck Dinner for One. Beets and Onions from Clifford Family Farm, Duck and Mushrooms from Zell’s Farm, Brussel Sprouts from Whole Foods, Wild Rice from Minnesota.

Thanksgiving Duck Dinner. (David J Mathre) — Thanksgiving Dinner. Image taken with a Leica SL2 camera and 24-90 mm lens (ISO 400, 24 mm, f/2.8, 1/40 sec). (David J Mathre)

Daily Electric Energy Used (65.9 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (25.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny, some clouds, but cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 40.0 kWh.

Tuesday (23-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Blue Jay.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

The Opossum is back.

My main 360 camera a Garmin VIRB-360 is getting old and has been discontinued by the manufacturer. The one lens has a scratch, and a battery failed. I’ve started looking at alternatives. I did this once before, trying out the Nikon Mission 360 (discontinued), Ricoh Theta, Insta360 One 4K. Each had issues. Later, I found the Ricoh Theta Z1 16-GB model then 64-GB model to be useful. But with idiosyncrasies. They have an interval mode, but with a minimum interval of 6 seconds (jpg) or 10 seconds (DNG). I decided to look at some of the newer 360 cameras. Insta360 One X2 and Labpano Lab Pilot ERA.

The following night time-lapse video was taken with the Insta360 One X2. I set the camera up outdoors connected to an external USB-C power supply to take raw (DNG) images every 30 seconds. With the external battery, the camera continued taking images all night, even though the temperature dropped below freezing. Processing the raw images was a bit of a problem since the raw image is not the standard equirectangular format. You need to convert the images via the Insta360 Studio 2021 program (batch mode) to generate a standard equirectangular image. Adobe Photoshop doesn’t appear to make time-lapse videos with DNG files, so I also had to convert the images from DNG to TIFF (using Capture One Pro) before making the time-lapse videos. With this camera I will need a better workflow.

alt_title. (David J Mathre) — Autumn Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Insta360 One X2 camera. ISO 504, f/2, 2 sec. Insta360 Raw (DNG) format. (David J Mathre)

Time-lapse Video (Little Planet View).

Time-lapse Video (Tunnel View).

Daily Electric Energy Used (67.5 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (28.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny but cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 38.6 kWh.