It might be the same bird as the first time, but this time he stayed for almost ten minutes – some of the time above the camera (you can hear him tapping with his beak). He gave the box a really good going over before finally leaving.
I’m hoping that such a long check means he likes the place.
[vplayer id=’29186′]
I had a very eventful weekend.
On Friday, the fuel panic-buying started. I’d noticed queues throughout the day, and I knew it wasn’t going to just blow over anytime soon. My main concern was having fuel for Monday, when I have a pupil on test. I’d already started thinking of cancelling weekend lessons if need be to make sure I could do it. By the end of Friday, I had over half a tank, but I knew it wouldn’t last the weekend and cover Monday’s test.
I get my fuel from Asda, but on arriving well after 9pm Friday evening, and after joining the small queue to the 24 hour pumps, it became clear that they were all locked up because Asda was out of fuel. So I nipped to the nearby Esso garage which had also had queues all day, and it was also closed early because it was out of fuel. I then took a long shot and nipped to a local village outside of the city and managed to fill up there (though they appeared to be short of diesel, and people were queuing).
I was still concerned about the Monday test, though. A tank of petrol would not last much beyond Saturday and Sunday with all the lessons I had scheduled. But on my way to my first lesson on Saturday, events took over. I got two texts in quick succession from pupils cancelling because they had something else on (translation: the Detonate festival was on yesterday, and they were going to that), one from someone’s mother informing me they were waiting for the results of a PCR test, and one from another who had a lesson Sunday and thought that Saturday was Sunday, then realised, and didn’t cancel after all. No problem, that would save me some fuel. Then I got stuck in stationary traffic half way along Wilford Lane, which meant there was no way I was going to get to my pupil on time, and which would then impact the second. I called him and explained, and we decided to stick with the one he had booked Sunday (he normally does both days). I turned around, and then immediately got stuck in stationary traffic going the other way, because there had been a crash on Clifton Bridge yet again in the roadworks. Once I got home, I loaded up Google Maps and watched the traffic movement – it was effectively stationary within 2 miles of the bridge, and remained so until the point where I would not be able to get to my next pupil, either. I contacted her and explained, and we decided to stick with Sunday this week (she also does two lessons week). All in all, Saturday went from four lessons to a day off. But at least I knew I’d have fuel for Monday’s test now.
Sunday dawned. My first pupil lives near the city centre, and I checked Google as I usually do before setting off, and noticed that 90% of the city/ring road side was closed – because of the damned marathon. So I went the long way round to his house and came in from the non-marathon side, which took 50 minutes instead of the usual 20. We drove off from his house, with a destination in mind for the lesson, and immediately encountered a police roadblock due to an accident. We turned around with another route now in mind, and as soon as we got to Mapperley we were met with almost stationary traffic.
The marathon causes this problem every year at the best of times, since people have to find alternate routes to wherever they want to be, which increases the traffic volume everywhere else. But this time it was made much, much worse by dozens of twats queuing for fuel at the Co-op garage on Woodborough Road. The video is a time-lapse, and covers about 15 minutes of real time.
You can’t see it in the video, but a bus was bouncing up and down as it had to go over a bollard kerb to get past. The twats who had filled up then decided that instead of leaving the garage by the rear exit, and having to wait for 30 seconds at the traffic lights on Woodthorpe Drive, they would leave by the Woodborough Road exit and turn right across the gridlocked traffic approaching on both sides, thus creating even worse hold ups. That was why the ‘lane’ we were in was stationary for so long when it ought to have been free moving.
Once we got by, the lesson continued to be eventful. We had to stop for an otter in Stoke Bardolph and then, as we waited to turn left on to Nottingham Road in Burton Joyce, we watched a woman on horseback with two children (one on a pony, and one leading a pony) nearly get killed because the horse was bucking and she nearly fell off.
The last leg of the journey was marked only by people driving straight into then out of the garage on the Gedling end of Carlton Hill (because it had no fuel), and to squeeze through the orange cones on the entrance to the one just after Porchester Road to see if the obvious unavailability of any fuel was true and actually applied to them, too. Oh, and my pupil nearly colliding with his mother as she drove away from their house rather too quickly on a blind bend with parked cars on both sides.
[vplayer id=’29181′]
Well, here’s something you don’t see everyday in Nottingham. In fact, it’s the first time I have ever seen one in the flesh (or fur) anywhere in my life.
I was on a lesson and we were driving through Stoke Bardolph. We’d just gone past the pub when I noticed what I first thought was someone’s coat at the edge of the road. But as we got closer I realised it was an animal. The words ‘stoat’ and then ‘dog’ (when I realised how big it was) passed through my mind.
But absolutely the last word I expected to end up with was ‘otter’.
I’m not an expert on otters, but what little knowledge I have from nature documentaries is that they are quite fast. This one did seem to be limping – maybe. And it was much bigger than I thought they were. It stopped on the grass at the side at the river and alertly watched us go by. It’s times like these when I wish I carried my proper camera everywhere with me.
I had my first non-insectoid and non-arachnoid visitor to my birdbox today. What appears to have been a Great Tit popped in and cased the joint.
He (or she) inspected every corner, and even checked the walls for integrity.
Apparently, this time of year they’re looking for places to roost, so I hope he comes back and then sticks around with a mate next Spring.
I have a new toy. A birdbox with a camera fitted into it. I will be installing it outside over the next few weeks, and maybe I’ll get some roosting birds in the autumn and winter, but I’m hoping to get them nesting next year.
The plan is to get Blue Tits nesting in my box. If that works, I intend to get another box and entice our Robin, who is tame enough to fly against you if you’re out gardening to let you know he or she is there so you can feed him/her mealworms (he won’t take them from your hand just yet, but he’s getting close on that). The birdbox I bought is from Green Feathers. They also supply their kits through Amazon. I chose the deluxe kit, which includes the birdbox, Wi-Fi HD camera, and all the necessary accessories. I also bought the daylight LED lamp to illuminate the inside of the box.
It comes with excellent instructions, and is easy to assemble as long as you can use a screwdriver (and perhaps an awl or small drill), and it connects to the Green Feathers app equally easily. I had it running with a live feed to the app within a few minutes. For most people, that’s really all they need. The app tells you when any birds visit (motion detection). The camera also has a microphone, so you’ll be able to hear any sounds the birds make. The LED lamp (optional extra) uses a sensor to detect daylight, and turns on during the day to give a true colour feed. At night, the LEDs turn off automatically, and the camera records in infrared (black and white). You can record the video stream and save it through the app, and you can also take snapshots. For most people, the birdbox and app are all that is required. But me being me, that wasn’t enough.
I am not a ‘millennial’, but I am computer literate (I have been building and repairing them for over 20 years). I cannot see the attraction of doing everything on your smartphone when you have a PC in front of you. Fine, getting a live feed of the birdbox to your phone is pretty cool, but this is a HD camera we’re talking about, and there is no way on God’s green earth that you can get a decent HD image on a smartphone. They’re just too damned small – especially iPhones, which most millennials seem to want to own at all costs.
So, once the system was running on the app, the next thing I did was download ONVIF Device Manager (Green Feathers cameras are ONVIF devices). It is a network video client, which means it can access and manage as many ONVIF devices you like. On running it for the first time, it immediately saw my BirdCam, and I was able to view the video live feed on my PC.
Then, I turned to my Synology NAS, and set up Surveillance Station. Now I know most people won’t have a NAS, but I do. Surveillance Station is software on the Synology NAS which monitors multiple video feeds, and allows recording and playback. It is mainly intended for security cameras, but it will work with any IP Camera (which Green Feathers cameras are). It, too, picked up my BirdCam immediately.
Note that ONVIF Device Manager and Surveillance Station are completely independent of each other, and have little if anything to do with what I wanted to do next (ONVIF did help me identify my video feed address). ONVIF Device Manager was simply playing around (and understanding what was happening), and Surveillance Station would provide an alternative if what I did want to do next turned out to be difficult or prohibitively expensive.
My main aim was to be able to put a live feed of my BirdCam on the blog.
I’ve not done anything like this before, though I knew it was possible. But how? My first thought was that I could provide the feed directly from my computer, but my internet provider might not be happy (or capable of it) if I tried to do it through my router, and my router might not be happy if more than a couple of people tried to view the feed at the same time. It was clear that I needed a media server service, where I provided a single feed, and the server managed the necessary bandwidth and distributed it to others.
To that end, after some searching – and being put off by silly prices – I came across ipcamlive, who do just what I wanted. I’d got this far on my own, but I have to admit I needed to contact their technical support a couple of times to get it working. However, thanks to them, I can now be certain that I can do a blog page with a live BirdCam feed on it.
Right now, all I have to do is bolt the bird box to the shed and I’m set to go. And hope that some Blue Tits like the location enough to set up home next spring.
Can you believe this one? It happened today on a lesson. We’d just driven through Bestwood Village and were heading towards Bulwell.
We stopped at the traffic lights at the junction with Hucknall Road, and it was tipping down with rain. Then, a motor hearse drove through the junction just before the lights changed to red. I was just commenting that the day was already depressing enough, when it was followed by a horse-drawn hearse, which went through the the lights when they were probably on red. Then, a second horse-drawn hearse went through – and the lights were definitely on red this time, since ours were now green.
But what happened next was unbelievable. The hearses were being followed by a large convoy of mourners, and they proceeded to go through the lights while they were on red. The blue car in front of us pulled out when our lights turned to green, but then, one of the convoy went through red lights in the other lane to deliberately stop anyone from turning. The blue car blocked the junction, through no fault of his own, and had to reverse back when the assholes on the other side – who could see clearly what had happened – started sounding their horns at him when the lights changed again their side.
The convoy continued, and even after our lights went green again, they still continued through the red! They were all driving with their hazard lights on, so any signals were absent, of course.
Once we turned off Moor Bridge, I told my pupil to stay left, because there was no way we were going the same way that they were (they were either heading for High Wood Cemetery or Bramcote Crematorium). But even then, another one of them deliberately moved into the left hand lane to stop anyone passing.
And when we got to the junction with the A6002 – where they were all going – a white Volkswagen Golf GTi was blocking the junction again so that the convoy could proceed unimpeded!
Nottingham Police still do not accept dashcam footage unless you send them the SD card by carrier pigeon (and at £80 a pop, they can stuff that), but just in case they fancy getting off their fat arses and following any of this up, the registration numbers and vehicle details of some of these twats were as follows:
SP60 ULH – Silver SEAT Altea
GN63 GXX – White Audi A1 Sport
BL06 OCO – Black Lexus IS 220D
DE04 LGK – Silver BMW 320D
YG20 KFT – White BMW 118D M Sport
OY17 XOS – Grey Audi Q3 SE TDi
CE66 COH – White BMW X5 XDrive 40D
FH68 CYJ – Grey Volkswagen Tiguan SEL TDi (this one blocked the left hand lane for a while)
KN53 JVG – Black Ford Fiesta (this was the twat who blocked Moor Bridge to start with)
BJ06 AUL – Grey Renault Megane
CH08 LAN – Blue Maserati Levante D V6
SA17 ULU – Grey Vauxhall Corsa SRi Ecoflex
RF66 WHT – White Volkswagen Golf GTi (this one was illegally blocking the A6002 junction)
These are just the ones I passed – cleverly having their hazard lights on to identify themselves on camera. At least nineteen of them went through illegally in the initial convoy, plus the two horse-drawn hearses. Some were complete pimpmobiles.
Funeral processions obviously happen. But funerals are also personal – and there is no way they should be inflicted on anyone else, and especially not like this. Standard protocol (unless you’re a complete prat) is that you drive normally to the gates of the cemetery, then you can do the solemn stuff once you’re off the road and not inconveniencing the rest of the world. You do not – unless you are one of the aforementioned prats (which these clearly were) – do what happened here.
Those involved in this pathetic show probably had numerous offences against their names already. If the police get to see this, they might get a few more. And deservedly so. It was a show of utter arrogance, created danger and inconvenience for everyone else – and all because they wanted to show some stupid clannish affinity with someone had died.
But they were just stupid pillocks.
This one happened a couple of weeks ago. I was on my way to a lesson, and turned into Mabel Grove in West Bridgford.
Mabel Grove is a narrow road, and only one car can pass each way at the best of times. So when I take my pupils down it, I always make sure they understand the importance of checking down the road before they turn in.
I immediately saw a van was blocking the road completely. It turned out he was making a delivery to a house that is being refurbished (probably a student HMO). I didn’t know that – I assumed it was a courier dropping off a parcel – so I turned in and parked so he could move away again once he’d finished.
As it happened, the van was making a delivery of building materials. Ironically, there was space either side for him to park, but the driver (‘boss’) was the SIlverback Mountain Gorilla type of tosser, and he chose to just stop and block the road, with no thought for anyone else. He was accompanied by an apprentice or trainee tosser, who walked slowly after each package of material was delivered to collect another, whilst glancing up and down the road at the tailback he and his mate were causing.
The house owner (or landlord) would have been completely aware of the delivery, and should have cleared their driveway to make things even easier. But they didn’t.
They had a full van of building materials, and they took their time. I stress, while blocking a significant through route.
In the video, once I’ve stopped, I’ve switched to time lapse. It took them a full ten minutes to finish, and another five minutes for the queues to clear. They did not hurry one bit, and it was all coolly calculated to be inconvenient – especially after I got out after five minutes and told the apprentice tosser they were just taking the piss (which they were).
They worked deliberately slowly. The apprentice tosser looked at the traffic each time he slowly – very slowly – walked to and from the van, clearly highly impressed with the arrogance he and his Silverback Mountain senior were exhibiting. People were getting out of cars to remonstrate and take photos.
Once they’d finally done, they calmly and deliberately sparked up to hold things up a little longer (and after the apprentice tosser had told his Silverback Mountain senior what I had said), and waited a little longer before moving away. No hurry, just deliberate stupidity.
There are some very, very sad creatures who are classed as human in this world. These were two such.
The van was a Peugeot Boxer 335, registration number CK17 WPN. The two occupants were registered at Twycross Zoo as exhibits in the monkey cages.
[vplayer id=28381]
Last week, I was going to a lesson in Clifton and caught this near miss on my dashcam.
When you consider what the blue car was, and the speed he shot off at across the mini-roundabouts once the taxi turned off, the FedEx driver was nearly involved in a very unpleasant situation.
Another recent one, this time on the A453 near Clifton.
My pupil was travelling at the speed limit (in fact, I’d told him to watch his speed as the GPS nudged 41mph). Then this van sped past, and flew across three lanes in those weather conditions. It was a silver Vauxhall Vivaro 2900 Sportiv, registration number FE65 LYG. Since we were doing 40mph, what does it look like he was doing?
This happened recently on the Priory Roundabout in Bramcote. The twat in question was driving a blue Mercedes GLE 450 AMG, registration number LN20 KYS.
Note that they used the right-turn only lane, and then cut in. It was completely deliberate, because as the title says, they are an arrogant tosser (as well as an awful driver, and probably known to the police).
Makes my blood boil, it does!