John Linwood

Bluetit eggs in the box in 2003

Bluetit Nestbox (aka ChickenCam)

A few years back, my youngest son & I built a nest box for bluetits in our garden.  We fitted the box with a black and white bullet camera looking down from the top wired into the CCTV system in our house and a PC with a video capture card.  That year we had a pair of bluetits move in at Easter.  They had spent several months visiting the box prior to this.  They layed 11 eggs.  Not all survived (possibly because the hot summer) but some of the babies eventually fledged. 

The following year we resited the box to face east to keep it cooler and have gone super high tech.  The box is still fitted with the black and white camera wired into our CCTV but we have enhanced this with infra red lighting (basically 2 IR emitting diodes) which are controlled by a radio switch (so we can turn it on and off remotely).  We also fitted temperature and humidity sensors (using the EnviroMon system from www.picotech.com) in the nest that are connected back, via a data logger, to one of my son's PC's which reports real time as well as logs the data every minute.  Unfortunately despite lots of interest there were no residents.

The next year we moved the nest box again after reading that the birds need a clear flightpath to the box.  Within minutes of moving it (I was still tidying up the soldering iron) a bluetit was in the box and soon they built a nest.  The pair layed 6 eggs but then something went wrong, the male bird disappeared and the eggs didn't hatch.  The female abandoned the nest after about 3 weeks.

We have now have upgraded the camera to a colour one.  A male bird has been busy trying to expand the entrance hole but so far no residents.

Data convertors for the sensors

Climate Monitor

This is a project that my youngest son did to monitor the climate in different parts of our garden.  He placed temperature, light and humidity sensors in various locations around the garden (in shade, sun, by the stream, etc).  The sensors are connected to a data logger which is then connected to a PC in his Den.  The PC shows real time data as well as keeping a log at predefined intervals.

The camera is under the water just below the drawbridge to my son's den

Pond Camera (aka Cod Cam)

Not really for cod but the colour camera is located under water in the artificial stream that flows in our garden.  The camera is connected to the TV's in the house so we can see the fish swimming around.  We have Rudd and Goldfish in the stream although on the camera they look huge - very "Jaws"

Plaque on the gate

Custom Garden Gate

While building a garden gate probably doesn't sound a lot of fun to most people and given you can buy them ready made it seems an odd thing to do.  OK thats fair but then I am not most people.  The side gate to our garden was a flimsy wooden affair that, despite being only a couple of years old was in need of replacing.  So instead of buying one we decided (at about 3 times the cost!) to make one.  It was great fun.  We went to the timber yard and bought smooth finished Swedish pine.  The gate is 2m high and around 1.5m wide with pegged mortise and tenon joints.  We routed all the edges of the planks and fitted traditional iron latch as well as a tenon lock.  Because the new gate was so solid and heavy we fitted new posts either side and use four substantial hinges to support it.  The finishing touch is a brass plaque with our names on it and the date of completion (Dec 2002)

Robin nest box in situ

Robin Nestbox

We get a large variety of species of birds in our garden including robins, bluetits, great tits, magpies, goldfinches, pied wagtails, blackbirds, starlings, wood pidgeons, crows and even the odd heron after the fish.

Flushed with the success of the bluetit nest box we decided to build a robin nest box too.  A happy afternoon spent with power saws, routers, nailers and sanders resulted in a rather spledid (if we say so ourselves) robin's nest box - in fact while we were working on it the robin was sitting watching us from the rail around the decking. We have sited it in a bush where we think the robin nested last year (there was a lot of chirping from the bush when the robin flew in and out).  Naturally we have fitted a black and white camera (ideal for low light) into the nest box but so far there has been no interest from the robins yet.