The baby ringtails who were shown riding on their mother's back in the November blog post have been seen around a few times and I thought I'd start this post with a few photos of them.
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| Baby Ringtail Possum - 5th Dec 2024 |
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| Baby Ringtail Possum - 1st Dec 2024 |
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| Baby Ringtail Possum - 1st Dec 2024 |
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| Baby Ringtail Possum - 5th Dec 2024 |
Grok is still nervous and skittish but otherwise doing well.
Grok sleeps on top of Box 7 most days. You can tell when this happens by looking at the Box Temperatures page - if there's a jump in Box 7 temperature (violet) at about 4:30 am, that will be Grok.
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| Grok - 11th Dec 2024 |
Sprout is getting bigger and going off on her own at times. She still occasionally back-rides on Blossom.
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| Sprout - 29th Nov 2024 |
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| Sprout - 11th Dec 2024 |
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| Sprout (top) and Blossom (bottom) - 8th Dec 2024 |
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| Sprout back-riding on Blossom - 14th Dec 2024 |
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| Sprout (left) and Blossom (right) - 23rd Dec 2024 |
Sprout has come in contact with her uncle Grok. Although Sprout is smaller and much younger than Grok, she chased him off.
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| Sprout (left) and Grok (right) - 20th Dec 2024 |
Blossom and
Sprout have recently started sleeping in Box 3. Previously, this box was in Wink's territory, so it would make sense for Blossom to claim it. I'm sorry about how bad the camera in this box is.
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| Blossom - 20th Dec 2024 |
Laslo is still visiting on and off. He is healthy, although recently picked up a small wound on his cheek.
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| Laslo - 11th Dec 2024 |
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| Laslo - 22nd Dec 2024 |
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| Laslo - 22nd Dec 2024 |
Completely out of the blue, a
Sulphur-crested cockatoo decided to visit one day. It was quite friendly and accepted some Vita-Weat. It came back again a couple of times but got scared away when I took a photo of it with a flash.
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| Sulphur-crested cockatoo - 26th Nov 2024 |
I don't think I've posted any photos of the brush turkey
Tabitha. She has an injured leg which makes walking very awkward, but she has survived in this area for several years now.
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| Tabitha - 13th Dec 2024 |
And here's a photo of
Merlin. One chick hatched from his mound a couple of weeks ago, but hasn't been seen since.
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| Merlin - 18th Dec 2024 |
It's getting difficult to tell which water dragon is which. Zen is seen sleeping in the trees most nights, but he looks different in torchlight at a distance at night than close up during daylight.
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| Water Dragon - 13th Dec 2024 |
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| Zen? - 15th Dec 2024 |
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| Elton - 21st Dec 2024 |
I'm really, really glad everyone seems to be doing well, though I'm admittedly a little worried about Grok.
ReplyDeleteAre there any worries now that Wink is gone that Sasha might start reclaiming her former Empire, or do you think Blossom is tough enough to keep her out?
I think Grok is faring very well under the circumstances. He's very nervous, but he's at an age where he would normally have to leave the area in another month or two, so he would be nervous anyway. I'm glad he's able to stay in the garage, which is premium possum accommodation despite its bad associations; I would have been worried if he'd fled the area at once.
DeleteThe last time Sasha was positively identified was in June 2024, so I think she has either moved elsewhere or something has happened to her. She was an adult when she first moved into the area in 2015, so she would be over 10 years old now. Brushtails are supposed to live up to 13 years in the wild.
If she does decide to come back, that would be great. I'd love to see her again and I'm sure that there would be enough room to accommodate both her and Blossom.
I'm glad Grok is doing well. It's really cool that you can track his sleeping spot by the temperature sensor, it's very clever and cute. It's also nice that Laslo is still hanging around, I've missed seeing him in the boxes - hopefully he'll drop by for a snooze soon.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I assume the streaming mode is intentionally disabled for possum.tv to save bandwidth? Is there any intention to make it available again at some point?
Streaming mode wasn't intentionally disabled, it's just that there's an annoying issue with how the latest browsers interact with the software I'm using.
DeleteSimplifying a little bit: My web server supports https (encrypted) connections but my streaming software doesn't. So an unencrypted URL like:
http://possum.tv/boxes.html?1
will allow both streaming and periodic updates, whereas an encrypted URL like:
https://possum.tv/boxes.html?1
will only allow periodic updates and won't support streaming.
A problem occurs with the latest browsers which try to use encryption wherever possible, so if you enter the first URL above it automatically changes it to the second.
There are various ways around this, but all have their downsides.
1) I can disable encryption altogether on the server, but that causes browsers to pop up scary warnings about the site being "insecure". The warnings are bogus because there's no need for encryption on the site - there are no passwords being entered and no private information being displayed - but they are scary and might lead people to think that the site has been hacked or is up to no good in some way.
2) You might be able to configure your browser to force it to use http for the box camera pages but that depends on the browser and is difficult to do. I did this on Opera, but I don't remember how I managed to do it.
3) I can update my streaming software to the latest version which supports https. The problem is that the latest software has so many other requirements, that I literally have to rebuild the server to make it work.
As it happens, the hard disk on the server is filling up and I'll need to upgrade it next year anyway, so I'll rebuild it at that time.
Until then, there's a hack you might want to try to get streaming. Whether it will work depends on your browser.
You can access the camera streams directly from the following URLs. The last digit is the camera number.
http://possum.tv:8081
http://possum.tv:8082
http://possum.tv:8083
http://possum.tv:8084
http://possum.tv:8085
http://possum.tv:8086
http://possum.tv:8087
http://possum.tv:8088
If these work you can probably bookmark them for future use.
Ah, I see! Using regular HTTP works well enough for me. Thanks for all the work you put into the upkeep of the site, it's delightful.
DeleteJust recently managed to catch the possums in action in Box 3, and the livestream worked perfectly. I did want to bring up that Blossom seemed rather uncomfortable, from what I'd been able to see- she was very twitchy and itchy and also looked like she might be sneezing somewhat?
DeleteI'm glad you got the streaming working. Some browsers fight you if you try to make them use http.
DeleteBox 3 camera is pretty terrible, but I think there might have been mosquitoes pestering the possums in Box 3. There are lots of mosquitoes around at the moment. They like biting possums in places where there's no fur, like the under-side of the tail, and maybe Blossom got bitten on the nose.