Wildlife Viewing Setup

Today was a nice autumn day. It was mostly sunny, somewhat warm, but with a chill in the air. I went outside and set up another bird feeding station, which is what I’m calling the ones that are on posts rather than hanging from hooks. I am proud of my endeavor so I thought I’d make a video to share it with you. I do not like making videos of me doing a lot of talking. It took me a lot of tries before I was happy with the result.

When I first got my wildlife camera, I tried locating it all over our 5 acre property. Eventually, I found the best location is in our little apple orchard. Our orchard currently only has six trees, but it’s convenient for me and the wildlife often come through it.

The challenge I have when positioning my wildlife camera is getting everything into range that I want to see. If I aim the camera at the hanging bird feeders, I cannot see the other wildlife–squirrels, deer, racoons, possums, skunks, cats, and occasionally rabbits and coyotes. But if I aim the camera toward the ground, I miss out on the birds. I want to see it all. I also don’t want the camera pointed at the house or at direct sunlight so finding the prefect location is not easy. Also, even though I keep my camera in the orchard, I like to relocate it occasionally to get a different perspective. Just moving the camera a little bit will give me more view of the forest, or of the driveway, or of the deer coming up the hill, or the wildlife on the boulders.

EJ and I love to repurpose things. We no longer have an umbrella for our patio table on the deck. A strong breeze broke the umbrella several years ago and we never got another. We were left with the umbrella-less base. A couple years ago, EJ came up with the idea of fastening the trail camera onto the patio table umbrella base to make moving the camera easier. The camera is attached to a tube that he put into the base. There’s a knob that enables me to raise or lower the tube. If I want a new location, I can either move the whole thing–base and all–or just slide the tube out of the base. There’s no unstrapping and strapping the camera to trees or posts.

After moving the base around, I found a good spot for it in front of the boulders. I didn’t want to “lose” the spot by moving the base. So I found other good places and put t-posts at them. The tube the camera is fastened onto easily comes off the umbrella base and slides onto the t-posts.

I also described to EJ a simple cover to protect the camera a little from the weather and he made it for me. It slides into the camera tube when it’s on the base. Although I can’t slide the cover into a t-post, I can fasten it to them using little bungy cord things to hold it in place. Sometimes the birds land on the cover and shake my camera. LOL.

For quite some time I’ve been contemplating how to position the camera to take in the wildlife on the ground and also the birds in the feeders. A couple weeks ago I finally came up with a solution: I made permanent low bird feeders in front of each t-post. I made them out of wooden posts that I sunk into the ground. I had feeder trays that came with a pole bird feeder and I fastened them to the wooden posts. I had only two of them so we nailed square boards to the other posts to put seed onto. I made the posts low so that the trays are at the bottom of my camera footage and doesn’t obstruct the wildlife coming into the orchard. It’s low enough that the turkeys can reach it. The possums also reach it to eat the leftover bird seed. I’m sure raccoons can also easily reach the seed, but I haven’t seen much of them lately. The cooler weather may have caused them to begin denning up.

During my birthday month, I’ve been setting up several of these “feeder stations.” I need to do it before the ground freezes, making digging post holes or pounding in t-posts impossible. I’m having tons of fun doing it.

Enough said. Now here’s the video in which I show you what I’ve done. As I said earlier, I’m quite proud of my solution.

Here’s a link to a video of doves at the feeder from the camera’s view.

Dove Shoving Other Doves