The hide develops

A number of people have noted, in response to my excuses involving imperfect glass, “Well, have you thought of opening the window!”.

Well, yes I have. But it has a window bolt which would be at least 28 years old, because I have barely touched the window since I moved here. So, why don’t I go through that box of old keys, the ones I really ought to chuck out but you never know when you will need one. So I went through the many keys of unknown application, and, Voila, sure enough, none fitted.

Hmm, but then the brain-wave – the lock being so old it might pre-date one-way screws, so why don’t I just take it off, and replace it with the trusty bit of wood in the slide groove. Sure enough, using my now readily available screw-driver, because I had cleaned up the workbench, I removed said lock and opened the window. Wow, I should have been an engineer.

So then, given the relative success of Prototype 2 (see yesterday’s blog), I moved on to Prototype 3. Using clamps and tape in case I made a muck of it, I constructed, not an extensive ad for Storage King (and seriously it could never be good for their business of making boxes for the box to be useful only when cut open),  a hide wall. There is enough vision through the conveniently located cuts between the folding bits of the boxes – Storage King must have foreseen such a use – and the camera, on a tripod, is focussed (ha!) through a hole in the cardboard with the lens itself seeking action through an old nightgown. I knew there was a reason for keeping that.

So now we have the ability, but with some practical issues to be resolved, to take pictures whilst hidden from view, and through an open window. But if I open the window when the birds are there, they will be alerted and will flee. I even dry lubed the window tracks,so moving the window would be quieter, but I think I will have to get up at sparrow’s each day and open the window before the action starts? I can’t leave it open, or my other daily, or more correctly nightly, visitors, the ringtail possums, will be permanent residents before I can say “antidisestablishmentarianism”.

So now I could take photos unseen by the birds – but remarkably, not one single bird up there all day! Figure that. I remember the owner of a cloud forest bird lodge high (otherwise it wouldn’t be in the clouds) in Ecuador, complaining of the perils of Galapagosisation – the belief that all wild animals were as accessible as they were on Galapagos.

Still, a great advance. Inevitably inherent in any prototyping exercise, there are a few teething problems there for the solving.

Michael Monaghan

Later April 2020