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| Sasha with baby back-riding - 12th Jan 2017 |
I suspect that Sasha's baby has been back-riding for a couple of weeks now. When Sasha has been using Box 7 recently, she usually exits the box with the baby hanging on underneath her tail. This is a logical, if undignified, alternative to trying to cling onto her back, and then getting knocked off when she squeezes through the entrance hole.
The baby is a little boy and seems to be up to all of the usual baby possum tricks; face-scrabbling and ear-biting his mother, exploring the nestbox, then falling down on his mother, etc.
So now is a good time to be watching the possum box webcams. Sasha is using Box 7 about 50% of the time, and when she's not in this box, she's in the rolled up garage door. If you don't see Sasha in Box 7 in the morning, it's often a good idea to check again later in the day, because she sometimes vacates the garage door and makes her way into Box 7.
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| Sasha's baby looking out of Box 7 - 10th Jan 2017 |
Farley is visiting regularly and is in good health.
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| Farley - 5th Jan 2017 |
Mischa is still in the area and about a week ago was seen to be giving cheek to Farley; he climbed up the balcony rail towards Farley and was about to bite his tail, but then thought better of it.
I'm surprised that Farley hasn't been more serious about chasing him off, but I'm sure he has good reasons for it.
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| Mischa - 6th Jan 2017 |
Mischa chose the wrong day to sleep in Box 3 today. Although somewhat shaded, Box 3 sometimes gets the afternoon sun and can get very hot inside. Today the box reached 39.2 C, which is the second hottest temperature ever recorded for the box. Mischa, who has not yet lived through a summer, had an uncomfortable time of it. He ended up sleeping in for an extra hour or so after it got dark, but appeared no worse for wear when he came to the house later that night and was running around, toe-biting, etc. like normal.
Mischa's eye injury is now almost entirely cleared up. There is only the faintest blue haze visible above the pupil. I'm actually surprised that it's healed this well; when Queek got an eye injury, there was still a blue patch visible more than a year later - although admittedly Queek had a much worse injury.
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| Close up of Mischa's injured eye - 11th Jan 2017 |
Of the ringtails, only Ruby and Koji have been seen recently. Koji sometimes visits the house on his own. Ruby now has a very plump pouch, so we might be seeing more baby ringtails some time soon.
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| Koji (left) and Ruby (right) - 5th Jan 2017 |
In other news, a new brushtail has been seen in the area. He appears to be a young male and could possibly be Toto's baby as he resembles her to some extent. There are no photos of him yet.
Gatsby (the Brush Turkey) continues to guard his mound. I haven't ever seen more than one brush turkey chick at a time in the yard, so I don't know if only the one egg hatched (which would seem unlikely) or whether there are more chicks hiding around the place.
Been taking some glorious photos of Sasha and her bub the last two days (mid Feb). Thank you again so much for those cameras!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that Sasha has decided to come back to Box 7 for a while, it's always fun to see her with a baby. I'm surprised to see the little one is still suckling, since he has been voraciously eating solid food for quite a while now.
DeleteThis is probably a good opportunity for me to mention the facility for taking photos of the nest boxes for the benefit of anyone who was unaware of it:
There is a "Take Snapshot" button on the box camera pages which allows you to take and download a photo of what's currently happening in the box.
The photos are only at the default resolution of the cameras - 320 x 240 pixels - but they're slightly higher quality than the streaming video, so you're better off using the snapshot function than trying to take screen shots of the video.
There are no restrictions on using this function; anyone who can see the page should be able to use it. If it doesn't work, the most likely thing is that you've got either Javascript disabled or some sort overzealous of pop-up blocker installed. Let me know if you have problems because it might be something I can fix at this end.
There are no copyright issues associated with taking and using these snapshots. Since you're the one taking the photo, as far as I can see, you own the copyright over it and can use it however you like.
Also, the snapshots are stored on the Possum TV server and aren't deleted after you download them. This means that if you accidentally click the "Close Window" button rather than "download", the image isn't lost for ever. If you've done this, email me with the box number and date and I can send you any missing images.