Friday, December 14, 2007

Something in the Garden is Feeding

We have a nocturnal visitor.  Every night for the past week something has been coming into the garden and dining on whatever the birds have left from during the day.  Said visitor doesn't seem to be bothered about what it eats, seemingly rather partial to both stale bread and dried mealworms.  We suspect that it is probably a fox although the jury is still out, but given that our garden is completely enclosed it seems unlikely that anything else would be able athletic enough to make it over the potting shed/garage roof.
 
So in order to try and catch our visitor "on film" we have come up with a cunning plan.  We are turning our web-cam around to record the comings and goings in the garden.  Now the resolution won't be great but we should at least be able to find out who our visitor is.  That's so long as whatever it is, is big enough to trigger the infra-red sensor on the garden light.  This will work if the animal is indeed a fox, as we know that our dog (approximately fox sized) already triggers the light when he goes out after dark.
 
The only flaw (I think) is that we might not have enough hard-disk space to record for long enough, given that we'll have to leave the camera running.  In theory if we make the picture as small as possible and turn down the number of frames per second that will help, however anyone with technical know-how your thoughts would be appreciated.
 
I plan to try tonight, as our visitor seems to be very consistent, and we'll see what happens - if it works will try and post the video here.

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