#14 Midnight Snacks

Dear Owl Friends,

We've been wondering what fat, juicy morsels Blue has been feeding to Peach, and today with the grandkids we found a large slug that looks just like her food. Duh. They're only out at night, so it's hard to spot them during the day, but we got lucky...or some would say. Vander and Terry found it most interesting.
This morning was the first time we've seen the remains of any larger food in the nest box. If you watched any of last night's stream, you may have seen she received offerings of a mouse and a bird. The box was quite cluttered with the leftovers, and we had to scroll back and forth a bunch of times to try and see him feeding her. The only one I really nailed down was the mouse, and that is at 11:02:15. If you find the bird, I'd like to know when it appears. I think it was only shortly later, but I didn't quite pin it down before the kids arrived.

Finally, we apologize for the glitchy YouTube feed. Today we had to go in and replace the thumbnails of the live streams. They didn't meet community standards. Yup. For next year, we'll move the nest cam up slightly so it doesn't look like two thighs and a crotch. Who knew?

Thanks for watching. Feel free to share, join, leave comments, or whatever moves you.

#13 Setting Up a Live YouTube Feed from Your Nest Cam

Unfortunately, there is no useful information on connecting a webcam to your computer anywhere on the internet. I thought this would be easy, given all the live nest cams out there. But no. We had been using Pat’s iPad to video our TV which was hard-wired to the nest box cam. But that was clunky and picked up every sound we made. Plus, we got busted by Facebook (twice) and YouTube bots, which are both faulty. We really wanted a direct connection to my PC so we could get the patchwork tech out of it.

But it turns out that no one I could find had any clear “how to” information. I’ll spare you the large number of dead ends, and an explanation of each piece in the small pile of hardware that will be going back to Best Buy, Amazon, and other vendors.

First, the camera. I bought a Hawk Eye Nature Cam (https://birdhousespycam.com/) for Pat after we had nesting Western Screech-Owls in 2018. It’s an infrared camera with a microphone that I installed in the existing nest box in 2019. Sadly, we had no owls that year. The cam comes with 75’ of RCA cable. This is the familiar, old-school cable with white (audio) and yellow (video) male plugs on the end. There is one other plug but that’s for the power supply. Because it’s not stereo, there is no red audio plug. RCA is also called AV, in case you really want to find parts that you don’t need.

I ran the nest box cam wires down the nest box tree, under the lawn, and through the side of the house so I could plug them into the RCA ports on the back of our TV. The biggest clues on that little enterprise are, 1) don’t drill into a water pipe, 2) don’t hit an electric line, and 3) slant the hole down from the inside to the outside so that water doesn’t run into your house. Being electrocuted is bad, but at least it’s quick. Water damage, on the other hand, never ends. After threading the wire into the house through a PVC pipe about 6” long, fill the tube with some kind of expanding plastic foam that you always wanted to use but never had a real reason to do so. Keeps the riffraff out.

The camera is terrific, and we enjoyed just watching the action in the nest box on a gigantic screen normally dedicated to the Green Bay Packers, Boise State Broncos, Dallas Cowboys, and, yes, even the Minnesota Vikings, when I’m out birding. The nest box cam is the AV “source” for your TV input signal.

But we really wanted to share this super cool little owl and all that Peach (she) and Blue (he) were doing. I already had a YouTube channel, and my good friend, Tom Carroll, told me how to add a live feed to the existing videos on birds that I had uploaded there. Let’s do it!

I have a Dell XPS 8700 with a GeForce GTX 1070 video card with 8GB of video RAM for, uh, watching really fast owls move. Short version – all the video ports on this PC and that card are OUT. That is, none of them are for bringing video IN to the PC. There are also a bunch of audio ports on the XPS, but those are all for sending audio OUT. As I said, I’ll spare you the details. All that’s left for IN are USB ports.

After several hours of searching for answers and parts on the internet, and after numerous dead ends, I finally came upon the solution. This was aided by George Lowry pointing out to me the simple fact that I would have to convert analog to digital. Sure. Seems obvious after someone says it. And, a word to the wise, I finally found the correct piece after talking to RJM Computers in Boise (http://www.rjmpc.com/) on the telephone. After I told them I needed to go from a hard-wired, analog signal video camera with RCA IN male plugs to a digital converter with a USB OUT connection (the only input ports on my PC), they pointed me to the piece. Importantly, the internet could not give me that instruction.

The piece we needed is an Easy CAPture USB 2.0 Video Adapter with Audio. $25. Easy, right? Plug and play, right? This device comes with a mini-CD with drivers, instructions, and some other software. After choosing setup.exe, everything seemed to be going according to a typical install. But this software closes, and then nothing happens, and nothing works. Add another hour. Look at their obscure software. Search the web some more. Turns out Easy CAPture puts an icon on your desktop that you must click on to finish installation. There is no guidance to that effect – I just noticed the icon between bouts of pulling my own hair out. That’s where you enter the Product Key – 25 alphanumeric characters. Success! Right?

Nope. Reboot. I could now see the video feed from the camera, but it was just a black box and it was flashing on and off with another screen that had an error message, something like Error – USB camera not detected. It was so fast I couldn’t read it well. But obviously the camera was detected, just not in a stable way. I went to YouTube and selected “Go Live” to see if maybe YouTube could see the feed. Nope. Just a black box and one of those spinning wheels that may as well say, “you lose.” Reboot.

Now, I saw the video feed on my PC without error messages. Back to YouTube, and after a minute or so, YouTube had the video too. At last, right? Time to Go Live and open the Champaign, right? Nope. No audio. Reboot.

I spent another 2 hours searching the web and every setting in Device Manager, moving the device to different USB ports, and reading through every half-baked tech advice site on the internet. After changing every privacy setting, access setting, and app setting, after giving permission to every entity on earth to look into my soul, nothing. I had no audio on my PC. You can’t go live without audio.

I then asked Pat to just go to YouTube and check in on the feed from her PC. Maybe the audio was there but just super faint or…..I don’t know!! Something! Please? Surprise, surprise. The audio was there when you listen in from another location. It’s just that there is no audio on the host computer! That’s my computer. Seems like somebody could have told me! Well, now YOU know.

Have fun!

#12 Owls Direct WE ARE LIVE!

#11 Male with Night-crawler

Good morning,  birder friends,

The most common food items we've been able to identify are earthworms. Today, Pat spotted the male fly in with a nice, big night-crawler. He delivered the worm a few minutes later. He's perched in the arborvitaes along the back of our yard. We suspect that's where he'll be perching, now that all three young are hatched.

Pat has a new lens on her camera and will probably start camping in the yard to get good pics.

Owls!!!

#9 Happy Birthday and We're Live!!!

Dear Owl Fans,

Please add your email in the bar above.

As of this morning we have one owlet hatched. She/he was barely born when I got up at 5:45, based on the fact that it was very weak and the mother had not eaten the shell yet. About an hour later, she did eat the shell.

Since then, she hasn't left the nest box for us to get another look at the newborn, but we are now live streaming at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGcuxbAl_tZ-TKS8eEcS5g or Bird Talk With Terry Rich.

Please join us there!

Post #8 Is Today the Day???

Dear Owl Watchers,

First, and brand new, see the bar at the top of the page? That's where you can add your email address if you want to be notified when there's a new blog post!

Google tells us that eggs hatch in 26--34 days. Today is the 26th day since the first egg was laid. For that reason, we're watching very closely.

Today might also be the day that we go live on Terry's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGcuxbAl_tZ-TKS8eEcS5g
Or, if it's easier, Bird Talk With Terry Rich.

He's struggling to get the right adapter to run the camera to his computer. It's harder than it looks. But with a little luck, we'll be live later today.

We're very curious to see how the female, Peach, acts when the eggs are hatching. Does she know? Does she leave the nest box? Does she just step aside and watch? Very curious.

Also, the male, Blue, has been in the box a few times. We now can recognize him because he has a lighter-colored head and makes different sounds than Peach does. Will he feed her as always? Will he also feed the owlets? Or will she feed them? Very little research has been done on Western Screech-Owls.

Two years ago, when we had owlets, we didn't have a camera in the nest box. We only saw the owlets when they were able to peak out of the hole. Be ready to have your heart melted. Seriously, I now get why there are owls on everything. Socks, clocks, wall hangings, towels--everywhere you look, images of owls. Trust me, the real thing is waaaaaaaay cuter.

To tide you over, I'm attaching my favorite trail cam video from two nights ago.

Post #7 Peachtree and Bluegrass

Dear Owl Enthusiasts & Generally Bored Self-Quarantiners,

We hope you've been enjoying my live streams of our owls feeding at night. We've figured out their schedule and so it's been easier to predict when to shut off Rachel Maddow or American Idol (my guilty pleasures...Terry pretends to hate the latter) and turn on "Owl TV."

At about 7 PM, the female usually pops up and looks out the hole, preens herself, and peeks out a few more times. By about 8:40 PM, she usually leaves the nest for 10 or 15 minutes and comes back, only to preen and coo a few times. (Terry will correct me with the scientific terms.) Then, she usually gets more insistent and the male (who has been calling from the sycamore tree, maple tree, or arborvitae) swoops into the nest part of the way and slips her a worm, grub, or other seemingly delectable morsel. She usually chatters a bit more while eating.

Some nights, we (and she) get really lucky and see repeated feedings between about 9 PM (MDT) and when we finally call it a night. Maybe you've seen some of the video clips, both from our live stream and also from our Moultrie M-series trailcam. (I'll try and attach one here.)

BUT, the really exciting news--and I have two things to share--is that we have finally named the owls. I figured we'd better get on with it before the babies are born and it gets really confusing (because I know you're going to try and keep track). Her name is Peach, after Peachtree St. His name is Blue after Bluegrass. Now don't come looking for us. Those are our cross streets and I suppose something could be arranged by appointment only, but drop in birders are not in the plan. Oh, and if you do get invited, bring your masks. Not kidding.

However, this brings me to my second bit of breaking news. As soon as Amazon delivers the adapter we need, Peach and Blue and their owlets-to-be will be live streamed on YouTube. You might want to familiarize yourself with Terry's YouTube account, which you will find here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGcuxbAl_tZ-TKS8eEcS5g

Trust me, we will make sure you know when we go live, other than every night on Facebook at 8:30 PM, that is.

We hope these snippets of hope entertain and distract you, especially around April 22nd when the first eggs are due to hatch!

Post #6 Diet of Western Screech-Owls

According to Birds of the World, Western Screech-Owls eat a large variety of prey. “Diet varies tremendously from place to place and season to season.” Items documented in the diet include:

            Invertebrates – carpenter ants, moths, crayfish, caterpillars, Jerusalem crickets, whip scorpions, and earthworms.

            Small birds – House Sparrow, and Violet-green Swallow nestlings.

            Large birds – Northern Flicker and Swainson’s Thrush.

            Small mammals – shrews, desert pocket mouse, deer mouse, southern grasshopper mouse, kangaroo rat, and big brown bat.

            Larger mammals – white-throated wood rat and cottontail.

            Fish – trout, mountain whitefish, and tidepool sculpins.

            Amphibians – Pacific tree frogs.

            The only food item we’ve been able to identify so far are earthworms. The male is also delivering smaller items that we can’t make out. We’ve not yet seen evidence of birds or mammals. This video shows the delivery of one delicious earthworm. 

            It turns out that earthworms are actually quite rich in protein and various amino acids. The protein content of earthworm meal was 54.6–59.4% on dry weight. Their protein content and amino acid composition are better than those of fish meal, cow milk, and soybean meal. The crude fat content of earthworm meal was 7.34%. If you want to know more, check out “Nutritive Evaluation of Earthworms as Human Food” (Sun and Jiang 2017). Me? I'm moving on to another food topic.

Post #5 Trail Camera Photos

In addition to the camera in the nest box, we also have a Moultrie M Series trail camera, which Pat turns on around dark. It’s mounted on a tripod on our deck. This camera is motion activated and takes pictures with an invisible, infrared flash at night. The resulting photos are in black and white, but that’s good enough for this purpose. We just want to see who is moving, when and where. As you can see from the one photo taken around sunrise below, you get color photos when there is adequate light. There are a variety of settings, which I won’t go into here, except that we have all indicator lights turned off. Having the date and time stamped right on the photo is another essential feature.

The first photo shown here was taken on March 22, 2020. You can clearly see the reflected light in the eyes of the female emerging from the nest box and from those of the male perched to the left side on a large tree branch. This was 5 days prior to the first egg.

The second photo, taken April 3, shows the infrared glow from the camera in the nest box, and a bird perched to the left on the branch. We assume this was triggered by the female flying out of the box, but she apparently got behind the trunk before the camera tripped. Owls cannot see infrared, so that’s why it’s used in both of these types of cameras. She had 3 eggs as of this date.

The final photo was taken on April 5 at 08:33 (8:33 am). Sunrise was at 07:18. You can see the female peeking out of the occupied nest box, so apparently something she did tripped the camera. These photos get more interesting as the young start to emerge from the box and perch nearby. We also hope to get interesting shots of adults delivering food to the young at that stage.

Post #4 Male feeding female in nest box

The male started feeding the female in the nest box last night (April 1, 2020), and we obtained several video clips. But they are much too long for this blog (they are posted on Terry's Facebook page for April 1), so we're posting a single episode from this evening. This is a typical sequence. The female seems to hear the male outside, begins a series of "begging" calls, gets some food item, and the male leaves. She also typically preens, shakes, and then settles down and waits for the next food delivery. The only food item we have identified for sure so far is earthworms (2). 

Post #3 Egg Laying and Incubation

Birds of the World has few details on incubation behavior in Western Screech-Owls. This species has asynchronous hatching. Females lay several eggs over a period of days. If the female starts incubating with the first egg, that bird will hatch before any of its siblings. Eggs laid later will hatch later. The problem, from the viewpoint of a young bird is that, if you are the last one hatched you are also the smallest in the nest. If food is in short supply, you may not get much. And even if food is plentiful, your older, stronger siblings may get most of it. Thus, in some cases those younger, weaker birds die. Asynchronous hatching is typical of altricial species – those whose young are cared for in the nest for many days or weeks. Altricial young cannot take care of themselves.

I once found the nest of a Short-eared Owl out in the sagebrush country near Craters of the Moon. The mother had 11 young, and each one was a slightly different size. There were lined up like Russian Dolls around the edge of the nest. I’ve always wondered how that turned out. It was a boom year for Microtus, so hopefully they got plenty to eat and they all grew up. Our bird is most likely to lay 3-5 eggs, so if we end up with Russian Dolls, the difference won't be so great from oldest to youngest. We're at 3 eggs as of this post.

The other strategy, practiced by precocial species, is to begin incubating when the last egg is laid. That way, all the eggs hatch within a few hours of each other. This is synchronous hatching. Think of ducks, geese, and chickens. Once all the eggs hatch, the young leave the nest together. Realize that in precocial species, the young are almost immediately capable of walking and/or swimming and getting their own food.

Our owl seems to be minimizing the coming age differences among her young. She did not start incubating full time with the first egg. She’s gone off hunting for periods of hours during the night. But she is incubating some during the night, and she’s incubating all day. This approach should minimize the age differences among the young.

Although our nest cam cannot see beneath the bird, since the first egg was laid we are identifying some new patterns of behavior. She spends most of the day sleeping. But every so often, she stands up, turns around repeatedly, stretches her wings out, and bows her head beneath her, almost standing on her head. We think this is when she is turning the eggs, adjusting the nest substrate, and preening her belly feathers to create a brood patch. We think she also does this when she’s actually laying an egg. We can’t see the eggs until she leaves in the evening, so over the entire day we can’t tell exactly what is happening. It would be nice to have another camera lower in the box, but even one there could be easily blocked. Plus, we feel like we’re intruding enough already!