The Four Ages Of Sand

Another day, another hummingbird

I'm still extracting little bits of magic from all my rubbish filming last year. I was waving the camera around like a madman for ages, trying to film this little hummingbird (it's around 1.5 inches long) deep in woods in the foothills of the Andes, and thought I'd failed, but a careful look through all the footage revealed just a second or 2 of useable footage. Slowed to 25%, stabilsed, cropped and enhanced, and hey presto! Not sure of the species yet.

 

Green Dragon

It's not just birds and butterflies in Venezuela, there be dragons too. This one was behind the house:

 

Clearwing butterfly

A real beauty in Venezuela. In the second half of the clip, the wings are silhouetted against the bright background. This was in the woods on the outskirts of Merida, early in the morning.

Bombylius major (large bee-fly) revisited

Old 4AoSers will remember this from almost exactly 5 years ago:

 

I had no idea what it was but UniC solved the mystery. It's a bee-fly (Bombyliusmajor). I've tried filming them over the years but never got any good footage, till this one on forget-me-nots in Northaw Woods: 

Preparations for Venezuela

I've bought a birdhide for Venezuela!

Here's me testing it:

It's got 3 windows, and even a hole for me to stick my lens through:

 

The ever supportive UniM is encouraging me to spend a lot of time in it every day, "for practice" she says. Yesterday she tied and Velcro-ed me in from the back and left me for hours even though there were no birds around.

 Now THAT's love.

 

Happy Birthday to me!

Did I mention I've had a big birthday recently? In all the celebrations I forgot to blog my birthday postcard from Mum:

(I've taken off the full addresses in case certain 4AoSers turn up begging for money; it's happened before) 

It actually took hundreds of hours to make because it's all embroidered, front and back!

 

 

Saucé: Striped Cuckoo(Tapera naevia) in Venezuela

I heard the call of this bird many times in Venezuela but never saw it until last summer. I was disappointed to find that it was quite an ordinary looking thing and I was at quite a distance so the video was shaky and pretty low quality so I left it on the cutting room floor until now.  It turns out to be more interesting than at first glance because of its crazy crest, bobbing up and down as it sings. I couldn't find it in the field guide but searching Google for Crest + Bird + Venezuela quickly showed it to be... a striped cuckoo 'a bird more often heard than seen.' 

Here it is after a lot of playing around in Powerdirector 10. The original is on the right, and the enhanced on the left. The post-processing stabilisation in Powerdirector really is something special:

 

 

Another zoom test: Yellow-headed Caracara, Venezuela

Gosh, 3 posts in 24 hours! It's like the good old days. Another zooming in test on a distant bird: 

The joy of video frame extraction and animated gifs

 

 Ah I do love picking out the most interesting frames from a video clip. This hummingbird stuck its tongue out for a fraction of a second, and chances of me photographing it were very remote, but with the video, it's easy to pick out the key frames later and enhance them. The first part is played at original speed, then slowed to 1/3 speed,then the individual frames at the end:

I've also been playing around with animated gifs. In the past, Typepad displayed animated gifs automatically, now you have to click on them to get them to work, for some reason.

And the close up enhanced version. Click on the image to activate:

Faces in places

Nice one from Alan:

 

This little chap looked quite happy, despite being trapped in a tree.

Zooming in on a Crimson Tanager in Venezuela

You might think that brightly coloured birds like this Crimson Tananger are easy to spot, and sometimes they are. This one sat right in front of me posing proudly:

But most of the time they are almost invisible. Here's one high in the trees. It took me ages to find it; see when you can spot it. It's also a good demo on the excellent zoom and image stabilisation feature on the SD900 Panasonic: 

 

Venezuela revisited. Part 2

Another clip saved from the cutting floor. This hummingbird only stayed still for a little over a second, but slowed to 20% of original speed gives us enough time to identify it as a female Amethyst Woodstar, I think.

 

Venezuela revisted

As my summer holiday in Venezuela approaches, I'm clearing out old memory cards ready for filming all the birds. There are all kinds of little gems hidden away among the rubbish; a three minute clip of me chasing a fast-moving hummingbird revealed only a few seconds of useable footage, but slowed down to 25% of original speed, it's come out quite well. And it's easy to pick out the best frame as a record shot too:

And enhance it:

The video:

 

Answer to "What is it? 303"

Time to reveal what the sound strip says.

No coded cries for help, just the words "Science is fun!"

 

I'm yours

I'm still practising the ukulele and I'm working on I'm Yours at the moment but I'm a little demotivated because this super-cute kid is WAY better than me:

 

Joe 90!

I promised UniM I wouldn't buy any more stuff at the auction on Saturday, as our house is getting increasingly cluttered,  but that was before I discovered there were several lots of Doctor Who, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet & the Mysterons,  and Thunderbirds videos. I won all 76 videos using my special auction technique of paying more than anyone else in the room thinks they could possibly be worth.  Result!

Iain's Beauty Tips

"How do you manage to stay so gorgeous and fresh-faced at 50?" I'm often asked. The answer is, a rigorous beauty regime administered by UniM, including regular exfoliation and twice-weekly Chinese Clay masks.