Whatever you think about grasshoppers, think again.
Tag: video
Turkey Vultures Bathing
Even scavengers take baths.
Turkey Vultures bathing in the Rio Grande.
Stormy Sunday
We had thunderstorms coming in from all directions this afternoon. The thunderstorm that built up over the Sandias was the most dramatic. While out on a walk before the storms, I encountered a little bit of wildlife.
Buckeye Butterfly
This video of the Great Purple Hairstreak Butterfly shows how it moves the flanges on the ends of its wings while it feeds. I assume it’s to fool predators into going after the flanges on its wings, giving it a chance to escape.
Blue Hairstreak
Silver kitty
Thunderstorm activity to the north.
Badgers in the Bosque
Leslie, one of our bosque buddies, walked towards me on the ditch bank holding her camera in such a way I knew she got something special. “I got a first for the bosque!” she called out. “A badger” as she showed me a photo of a badger looking over a pile of sand on her camera’s screen. I said “Wow! I didn’t know we had badgers in the bosque.” On Friday afternoon I walked through the bosque and found the badger’s burrow, but the sun was still fairly high, and I didn’t see any badgers.
Last night I went out at sunset, and found a mama badger and two large badger cubs playing and foraging around the entrance to their den. I started shooting video with a 320mm lens. I was about 50 to 75 feet from the badgers. One cub at the entrance of the den saw me and watched me while its sibling romped and tugged at it. I moved to a better position, because the camera kept trying to focus on the foliage in the foreground. While one cub watched me, its sibling hadn’t noticed I was there, and started foraging on the edge of the sandhill. Likewise, mama badger was oblivious while I filmed her and her cubs. The cub playing on the edge of the mound suddenly noticed me, stopped, stared at me for an instance, and then ran to the den and dived in the hole. The mama ran up the the entrance of the den at the cub’s sudden activity, and acting slightly confused, she put her head down toward the hole. All of a sudden she shifted her position and looked at me as if the cubs said “Mama! There’s a paparazzo filming us.” She looked at me for a second, and then dove in the hole herself.
I started calling them and I believe the cub that was looking at me from the beginning, popped its head up and stared at me. I talked to it, told it I was okay. It ducked back into the hole, only to pop it’s head up again a few seconds later. It seemed fascinated by the paparazzo in black talking to it. It started getting dark, so I said my goodbyes and the cub stared at me halfway in the entrance to the den as I walked away.
I wrote and recorded the music accompanying the video this afternoon. The Badgers seemed worthy of their own song.
Snowy Egrets with Flamenco Guitar
Video clips of pair of Snowy Egrets in the clearwater ditch with flamenco guitar accompaniment. I am playing the Tientos for this video.
Sweet Painted Ladies
I made a short video (with flamenco guitar) of the swarm of painted ladies on our purple Salvia.
Now For The Rest Of The Story
If you are old enough to remember Paul Harvey, you will know where the title comes from. While I was waiting for Virginia to come out on Sunday afternoon, I heard Daddy owl hooting in a cottonwood about 100 feet from the tree with the nest. Instead of the hoots we normally hear, that sound something like “whoooo whoo whoo whoooo” in the same volume, tone and intensity, he was doing three or four hoots cut short, followed by three longer more intense hoots — “wht wht wht whoooo whoo whoo”.
When I walked over to see what Daddy owl was up to, he was chewing on something, but I couldn’t see what it was. I walked around the tree trying to see if I could get in a position where I could see what he held in his claws, but I couldn’t see what he had because of how he was perched on the cottonwood. Finally I called out to him “Hey owl, what do you have?” He then proceeded to show me that he had a bird, and made the silliest faces in the process.
I also took a short video of him hooting and gnawing on the bird. I named it Great Horned Owl with Dinner. The video is posted after the last photo. You can hear him hoot, and watch him gnaw on his dinner. I assume he shared his bird with Virginia and Mama Owl, but I can’t say for sure, since I couldn’t stay around long enough to see the rest of that story.
Spunk Watches Italian Music Videos
Spunk has started watching Italian music videos. His current favorites are Anna Tatangelo’s “Sensi” (Feelings) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB6QA7snWqk, and Litfiba’s “Squalo” (Shark) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbcYNU71JOo.
In “Squalo” there are a couple of women painted up as skeletons who dance in the darkness for a few seconds at various times throughout the video. Spunk would start pawing at the skeleton figures every time they came on screen. I wonder how he sees the figures that makes him want to touch them.
I put on another Italian music video, but Spunk lost interest soon after it began, jumped down and started playing with his toys on the floor. When I replayed “Sensi”, he bounded across the room, slid up to the computer and intently watched the video again — he seemed to be enamored by Anna.
The lyrics to “Sensi” in Italian and English are available at http://lyricstranslate.com/en/sensi-feelings.html. I did not find an English translation for “Squalo”.
The Tail’s Tale
Spunk plays with his tail, his tail and his tail. The video (video link) at the end is of him watching a video of himself playing with a stick and interacting with himself on the video.
Seeing Spots
This is how was seeing things after working until 1:30 am studying how best to shoot video with my Canon 5d Mark II. I was mostly figuring out how to get good, clear sound without line hiss and filter out as much background noise as possible, to do a video shoot for a client at the office. Even though, I’ve had my 5D for over a year, I had never bothered to learn how to shoot video with it, because I rarely do video. I had read about live view and video in the manual, but never bothered to try video. But now that we needed to reshoot a video session because of technical difficulties with the video camera used to shoot the video on Wednesday, and the videographer is out of the office rest of the week, my camera was it.
Before I started looking into the world of video with the Canon 5D Mark II, I hadn’t realized Canon had revolutionized the world of shooting video with a DSLR camera after they introduced the 5D Mark II around 4 years ago. While I think about the fact the the full-frame sensor (size of a 35mm negative) on the 5D is more than 20 times larger than most point and shoot cameras, the same is true for most video cameras, including video cameras that cost thousands of dollars more than a 5D. So I learned that Hollywood has been using the 5D for major motion pictures and TV shows because of it’s compact size and HD video that can be seamlessly integrated into sequences shot on 35mm film. I also learned that because of the FAT 32 formatting of CF memory cards single files sizes are limited to 4GB, about 12 minutes of HD video or 30 minutes of lower res video. But even the lower res video will cut off by the camera at 29 minutes 59 seconds because of laws in the EU that say any camera that records 30 minute or longer segments cannot be called still picture cameras or DSLRs, but have to be called video cameras instead. So Canon has the 5D cut the recording at 29:59 no matter the file size.
It didn’t take long to get all the video details worked out on the camera, but the sound was another issue, because there is a lot of background noise in the office, and the mics built into the cameras seem to pick up all noises in the office. So I needed to reduce background noise as much as possible. Around midnight, flashlight in hand, I ventured out into the darkness to find my audio equipment stored in the shed at the far end of the property. Twenty minutes later I made it safely back to the house with a tangle of microphones, cords, connectors and adapters in my hands, and spent the next hour doing sound tests between 4 different mics, a half a dozen different cables and half again that many connectors and adapters before I found a microphone/cable/adapter combination that plugged into the camera and produced low noise, high quality sound.
All the trouble was worth it, because the video and audio came out great. The video is of a signer interpreting the reading of the master plan for a deaf culture center. With the fantastic video quality, the reader’s wonderful voice, and having a very handsome signer interpreting the reading, the video might just go viral.
Off Center & Not Even 