Yesterday I mowed the lawns and field. Just for fun, I flew my drone while doing so, and got some photos and video.
Here’s drone picture of me on my zero-turn riding mower, having just completed the back lawn (just a boring circular pattern). My beard is doing a fun three-way split from the wind:
An animated GIF from the drone video of me on the mower:
A top-down aerial shot of the flowerbeds partway through mowing:
Another GIF, showing a much sped-up mowing of part of the flowerbeds:
It has been nice and sunny this week, so I did a little drone flying, and captured some more aerial photos.
Here’s our fountain garden area, with the bird feeders on the left, cat house under the tree at the top-left, various paths, and the defunct fountain (likely to become a planter soonish):
A couple angles of the pond (with the ducks visible):
A bunch of new plants in one of our flowerbeds:
A shot from 400 feet (the legal height limit for drones) of the flowerbeds, pond, veggie garden, hoop house, shop, etc:
The berry cage, veggie garden, and chicken runs:
The greenhouse and environs:
Closer to the greenhouse, showing the bee water pool and recent excavations for greenhouse plumbing:
Looking more horizontally, some distant hills:
Mount Hood is visible:
Zoomed:
Zoomed more:
We recently had a couple days of light snow… a bit unusual for March, but not unheard of.
I always enjoy taking pictures of snow, but now that I have a nice drone, I was able to take some aerial photos of it, too. The only downside was I needed to wait for the snow to stop falling, since the drone isn’t waterproof.
I’m looking forward to next winter if we get several inches of snow, for even better pics, but this is a nice start.
Let’s begin with an angled view of the snow on the flowerbeds, pond, back lawn, and chicken runs:
A top-down view of the field, flowerbeds, and pond:
A bunch of snowy trees in the mist:
Just below the cloud layer:
More snow-tipped trees:
Our tallest tree with the double trunk (as featured in a recent post):
From lower down:
Not from the drone, the gazebo and grove (I love that you can’t tell a difference in quality between the drone and iPhone cameras):
The next day, it snowed a bit more, about an inch, so I flew again to capture that:
Snowy trees:
Back on the ground, walking to the duck house:
The daffodils weren’t enjoying the snow:
I hope you enjoyed those snowy pics as much as I did.
A couple of times this week, the ducks walked across the back lawn to visit me by the chicken coop.
Firstly, you probably saw a couple of posts with aerial shots from my new drone; here’s one more of the pond and ducks:
On Monday morning, while I was doing my usual rounds to give the chickens and ducks treats, and refill the bird feeders, the ducks crossed the back lawn to come see me by the chicken coop:
The ducks by the chicken run:
After I left, they followed me onto the driveway, which is the furthest I’ve seen them from the pond:
I encouraged them to go back to the pond:
A couple of days later, they joined me on the back lawn again:
Did you see the YouTube video of them? Make sure you turn on the sound; fun to hear them quacking at me.
Once again, I encouraged them back to the pond, for their safety:
A view from the hidden path:
As was foretold, some more photos of and from my new drone, as I practice flying it. Gotta put in that flight time to become proficient!
Firstly, a shot of the drone on the (rather mossy) driveway, with a bee on the nose (I didn’t take off until she left):
(I probably shouldn’t attempt beekeeper humor by saying it’s not that kind of drone.)
A shot from higher up of the pond and landscaping; beehives in the upper-left, greenhouse, hoop house, veggie garden, chicken runs, etc:
From another angle:
Looking straight down:
The pond, from lower down (with a duck in the middle):
The main deck, with Rory sprawled out:
The chicken runs, veggie garden, and greenhouse:
Miles of trees:
Trees and a glimpse of Mount Hood in the distance:
I then flew around at a lower level, practicing my flying precision. Here’s the drone flying through the breezeway, as seen by the cat cam there (I did check that there weren’t any cats present before flying though):
And inside the brown gazebo:
Those pictures were from yesterday. I did a little practice today, but it was too windy to go very high, so I just did more low-level flying. Here’s a shot of the flag from flagpole height, showing the breeze:
As mentioned on my personal blog, I recently bought a new drone: a DJI Mavic Mini. It’s a huge improvement over the old Parrot one I’ve had for years, and a couple of smaller toy ones I’ve tried. I haven’t really wanted to use those, as they lack a GPS to help navigation, so tend to drift away without actively managing the positioning, and the cameras are low resolution and fixed in place, so photos and video are poor quality.
While this new drone is very lightweight and lacks more pro features like course plotting, following, object avoidance, etc, the Mavic Mini does have a GPS to anchor it in the sky and let it return to the takeoff location, a gimbal for the camera to keep it straight and steady, and a camera resolution (4000×2250) comparable to modern iPhones (4032×3024).
See that Dejus post for pictures of the drone while setting it up. Here are a couple of pictures of it in the sky:
I probably won’t keep the blade guards on long-term, but thought that they’d be helpful “training wheels” while I practice flying it.
Anyway, the drone will be fun when we go on trips, where drone flight is allowed (which is quite restricted). But I expect I’ll mostly use it to take aerial photos of our homestead.
So you can expect more posts like this one over time. Let’s take off, starting with a top-down view of our fenced veggie garden and berry cage:
From a lower angle:
The old chicken run (you can see some chickens by the hole in the fence between the veggie garden and their run; I don’t think they were fans of the strange noisy bird hovering above; it sounds like an angry swarm of bees):
Turning a little to the right, the new chicken run and coop:
Top-down to both chicken runs:
The pond:
Another shot of the pond, with the pond deck in the foreground, and duck house on the right:
Another angle of the pond:
Flowerbeds on the left, back lawn on the right, pond in the background:
Flowerbeds, with the white and brown gazebos visible:
Flowerbeds and white gazebo:
Closer to the gazebo:
A top-down view of the flowerbeds (could be useful for planning planting):
I hope you enjoyed seeing this unusual perspective on some of the homestead. I’m sure I’ll show other angles and changing seasons in future posts. Let me know if you liked this!
On this Flock Friday, closeups of ducks, aerial pictures of the pond, and more.
Firstly, the ducks in the grasses next to the pond. I’m not sure if they’re rooting for bugs, or looking for places to nest. Probably both:
A couple token pictures of some chickens:
The chicken feeder jug in the new coop, freshly filled:
There are still about seven chickens roosting above the nesting boxes, but recently a couple more have joined Lola on the main roosts:
Colorful boiled eggs in the fridge:
A bunch of pictures of the ducks:
Closeups of Bert:
And Gert:
The ducks roosting on the pot supporting the fountain (which is currently off) at midnight:
A couple aerial pictures of our pond and surrounds:
