Diary of BirdBoxCam, September 2004

19.9.2004

The blackout of cameras in box 4 is solved. Someone had chewed the cable so that the current wire was damaged!

Also the cable of the outdoor camera had some imprints of small.

Probably this or some other squirrel is guilty in this case. A squirrel has inspected this and other boxes every now and then.

Because the current wire was broken, the squirrel who bite it might have get a little electric shock from the cable. 12 volts is not dangerous but perhaps so unpleasant that the squirrel learned not to do anything like this in the future. Lets hope so!

14.9.2004

Nearly nothing has happend after the blue tit nesting ended and during the autum. There were no more nestings this year. Cameras of box number 4 has been active and on line since then. About a week ago a totally black out of both inside and outside cameras occured. The reason is so far unknown but it is most likely a cable damage.

Most of you readers still remember the nesting of the great tit this summer. Those who don't will find all the information at this page.

There were eigth chick at the beginning but only two survived. One was taken by a woodpecker, the others just died. Two dead chick were sent to EELA, the National Veterinary and Food Research Institute of Finland. The report of autopsy is here. It is only in finnish. No translation awailable, only a summary is translated.

Eela_raportti_talitiainen_pontto3_2004.pdf

Comments translated from the report:

"Both chicks had a diarrhoea caused by inflammation in the bowels. There were also sings of a sudden inflammation elsewhere in the organs. No actual cause of the disease was found in bacteria culture or histology examination. Inflammation in the bowels and widespread inflammation at small chicks are usually caused by synergism of many reasons.

Health and immunity of the chicks are critically affected for example by the quantity and quality of the food as well as the temperature and moisture of the environment.

The bowel of both chicks was allmost empty and the nutritional state was weak."

So the main reasons for the death of those chick seems to be malnutrition and inflammation in internal organs. That sounds logical because the beginning of the summer (actually he whole summer :-( ) was very rainy and not wery warm with not many insects and not enough food for the chicks wich needs a lot of protein to grow.

When the autum gets colder it is possible that we will again have a bird roosting in one of our boxes. Before that the pages will be uppdated only if necessary.

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