In addition to
automatically monitoring my TrailCam, the
garden based Raspberry Pi has continued to watch the
Blue Tits in
Bird Box III which have this year laid a clutch of seven eggs, averaging one a day.
![](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e7YGMrdytLk/UaNUQ_3LW4I/AAAAAAAABXg/zDEumiYMtys/s1600/20130509-05-00-00-00-zero-eggs.jpg) | ![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0bqu09yOFhQ/UZvJXsD-pII/AAAAAAAABWQ/KEGlepFfowY/s1600/20130517-06-12-01-00-seven-eggs.jpg) |
No eggs | One week later, seven eggs |
Here are some of the intermediate images:
![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lz0TfaMcKbk/UaNUQ7NgnFI/AAAAAAAABXc/cAYGJ1ZEAro/s1600/20130509-06-41-18-05-one-egg.jpg) | ![](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i9ZefYgfOOk/UZvJVB25oHI/AAAAAAAABVc/ivf8bSJ_xCo/s1600/20130512-05-09-37-00-two-eggs.jpg) |
The first egg, recently laid | Two eggs |
![](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8RdlSvUiUD0/UZvJVW-4oFI/AAAAAAAABVk/_5gntUrqGcA/s1600/20130512-06-00-00-00-three-eggs.jpg) | ![](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-djNu7LSgAHg/UZvJWEBRFgI/AAAAAAAABVs/K0L9Z-T4mgw/s1600/20130513-05-46-56-01-four-eggs.jpg) |
Three eggs | Four eggs |
![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hplzfAo7CR4/UZvJWTp0ciI/AAAAAAAABVw/oA6LhuOrJwM/s1600/20130513-08-44-42-00-shift-change.jpg) | ![](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F3_zT8TIClo/UZvJWgVjRfI/AAAAAAAABV0/jSk6U_EKT3I/s1600/20130513-10-29-32-03-twiggy.jpg) |
Feather delivery | Nesting material |
![](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z-FpFxwerpc/UZvJXAmu_HI/AAAAAAAABWE/gnBk1y9IY0Q/s1600/20130515-06-08-36-02-five-eggs.jpg) | ![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0bqu09yOFhQ/UZvJXsD-pII/AAAAAAAABWQ/KEGlepFfowY/s1600/20130517-06-12-01-00-seven-eggs.jpg) |
Five eggs | Seven eggs |
![](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AxaWh2oKA30/UZvK9pHWZlI/AAAAAAAABWk/T7d1hqAZxBw/s1600/20130520-07-42-13-00.jpg) | ![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zOPTBZ7k46s/UZvLWORGewI/AAAAAAAABWs/g8QQzvxK0nk/s1600/20130520-08-43-13-02-room-service.jpg) |
Still seven eggs | Home delivery |
![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KGx2_ffx778/UZvMGVrse7I/AAAAAAAABW0/70q9ZQ_qntE/s1600/20130520-09-04-52-01-more-insulation.jpg) | ![](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QJ4Fps0gXn4/UaNQmOTna3I/AAAAAAAABXE/LMhUggOeyn8/s1600/20130527-13-14-43-00-seven-eggs.jpg) |
More insulation? | Another week later, no advance on seven eggs. |
These glimpses of the eggs are few and far between - most of the images are of one nesting
Blue Tit moving on the nest, with only a handful of images with both parents visible.
With the default
motion settings I was getting tens of thousands of images a day recorded - which was causing trouble filling up the Raspberry Pi's SD card, and occasionally failing with a read only file system. That required me to reboot and delete older images to make space. I've imposed a maximum of 5 frames a second for now...
According to the internet, the typical
Blue Tit egg incubation time is around two weeks, so these should hatch about the start of June.
Update:
The
Blue Tit eggs hatched at the end of May
Hi
ReplyDeleteI followed your posts before, and built myself a birdbox using a Pi, IR-removed XBox camera, POE etc - almost the same setup as you have.
It's worked flawlessy since setup.
I housed it all in a large "Dribox" - plenty of room with weatherproox inlets for cables etc.
I had blue tits nesting in ours; laid 5 eggs (quite a small amount for a blue tit) and they all hatched.
Unfortunately they've all died one by one, last one went at the weekend :(
Fingers crossed yours do better !
Anyway, a bit of techy info.
I was running the camera at 640x480, and found this eating CPU time with motion, even at around 2 or 3 fps.
I switched to the following setup:
- mjpeg-streamer - this captures the image from the camera in mjpeg format, and makes the stream available. We were then able to watch a live stream on the home network, which updated a bit faster than motion could manage.
- motion - used the stream output from mjpeg-streamer as input (ie not direct from the camera) and carried out motion detection, snapshotting etc.
Seemed to work better than letting motion do it all; motion doesn't seem too efficient at capturing from the camera.
Anyway, I've just ordered myself a RPi camera module to tinker with; has the potential to offer better framerates and resolution. I believe it's possible (although tricky) to remove the IR filter too.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks 'MuddyBoots'.
DeleteIts a shame about your Blue Tits, but as you say, fingers crossed for this clutch.
As to the technical side, as I'm running two cameras I've been limited to 320 x 240 pixels, and larger images would just fill up the SD card even faster. However your idea to use mjpeg-streamer is neat - you could have motion running back at the house on a separate computer, so that the Raspberry Pi never has to write loads of data to the SD card.
I've also ordered the RPi camera module, but haven't had a chance to open it yet - let alone read up on the IR modification.
Thanks!
Peter