White Breasted Nuthatch conducts the "Chipmunk Christmas Choir" in a rousing rendition of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" beneath the town square Hemlock Tree. The Peanut Gallery - er "audience" is the forest squirrels. There is a special guest appearance by Chickadees whose singing upsets Mr. Nuthatch! Have a great Holiday Season!
Animation of Birds on Radar! December 19th, 2016 - A rare perfect circular donut echo is seen on weather radar from flocks of birds taking off at sunrise south of Orlando, Florida. It has long been known that bird movements show up on radar, but rarely do they show up as perfect circles starting from a small area and growing to such a large area. These birds took off south of lake Tohopekaliga near Kissimmee, Florida. Another circular bird echo can be seen further south toward the north shore of Lake Okeechobee.
Drone footage reveals giant Abominable Squirrels in a remote part of Alaska. As you can imagine the found footage affords only a brief glimpse of these shy and elusive creatures!
Gray Squirrels bury nuts as fast as they can - a true nut burying frenzy - as I spend some quality time handing them large ripe acorns given by a friend. The Backyard has no acorns this time of year (water oaks) while they are falling in piles in other areas of Florida with small live oaks. Rather than eating them as I expected, the squirrels seem in a great rush to bury them as fast as possible - many they will not find again. Maybe it is going to get cold this winter! You will also hear the calls of Gray Catbirds and Northern Cardinals in the background at various times.
The stunning Polka Dot Wasp Moth is the adult stage of the Oleander Caterpillar, here pollinating our Backyard Loquat Trees. It is rare to see and get film of these elusive beauties which flutter around slowly in the daytime (Syntomeida epilais Walker). Its dangerous wasp-like appearance and unusual color patterns say to potential predators like birds - stay away - thus they are perfectly safe to feed on pollen in the daytime alongside the bees and other pollinators. Their caterpillars are only destructive to Oleander Trees which are highly poisonous. Oddly another similar wasp moth with bright red wings is actually called the Spotted Oleander Wasp Moth - it can be seen in this video:
The adult stage of the oleander caterpillar is sometimes called the polka-dot wasp moth. Wasp moth is the common name given to the subfamily of arctiid moths to which this species belongs (the ctenuchines) because of their resemblance to wasps such as the sphecids and pompilids. The moth's body and wings are a beautiful iridescent blue/green. Small white dots are found on the body, wings, legs and antennae, and the tip of the abdomen is red/orange. Male and female moths are quite similar in appearance, and have a wing span of 45 to 51 mm. These moths are slow-flying and active during daylight hours, which contrasts them with other moth species which are usually nocturnal.
Improve your videos! A practical test of the MOVO VXR 300 Compact Stereo Video Microphone designed for DSLR cameras, point and shoot or "bridge" cameras and any audio recorder with 3.5 mm audio input jacks.
Movo VXR300 HD Professional Condenser X/Y Stereo Video Microphone for DSLR Video Cameras and Movo Photo HVA20 Heavy-Duty Video Accessory Dual Shoe Bracket for Lights, Monitors, Microphones and More.
I am mainly concerned with its use on DSLR's and bridge cameras like the Canon SX60 HS which is my bread and butter Nature video camera and was used on most of the videos on this YouTube channel.
I felt I needed an external microphone for three reasons - in this order - 1) especially with age and hard use all electronic super-zoom bridge cameras like the Canon SX60 will produce very annoying noises during zoom in and out operations that really sounds amateurish and needs to be edited out. 2) Wind noise - I just hate that loud wind roar that ruins many good videos and leads to putting music with the videos. and 3) to improve the overall sound quality of the videos.
Movo VXR300 HD Professional Condenser X/Y Stereo Video Microphone for DSLR Video Cameras and Movo Photo HVA20 Heavy-Duty Video Accessory Dual Shoe Bracket for Lights, Monitors, Microphones and More.
