My "Nuts Theory": The amount of nuts taken by squirrels from a feeder correlates with upcoming winter weather conditions significantly.
As you may have seen on Twitter, I have recently wired up a Squirrel Feeder with some sensors using a Raspberry Pi and a ESP8266 micro controller to log environmental weather data.
Two years ago I came up with the idea to analyze the eating habits of squirrels in order to use the data as a biological indicator for upcoming winter weather conditions.
I've proposed a "Nuts Theory":
The amount of nuts taken by eurasian red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) from a feeder correlates with upcoming winter weather conditions significantly.
But how do I verify my hypothesis?
A basic prerequisite for verification is the availability of "nut consumption by squirrels" data. Unfortunately, despite some generic data, I haven't found any valuable data source on the internet as of today. Thus, I have to gather the necessary data on my own and the "IoT Squirrel Feeder" project came into existence.
Hardware
+ Software
= The Squirrel Cafe
You'll find more information about The Squirrel Cafe on my Gourmet Mecca pages. If you are interested in the Raspberry Pi Micro Computer and the sensors I have used, have a look at Nuts'n Bolts. Python is used to glue the bits and bytes together. The latest source code is available on GitHub.
Go to the Statistics page to have a look how many nuts have been eaten and to see the speed of nut consumption measured in nuts per minute [npm].
If you are interested in this project, please feel free to follow my Twitter account @TheSquirrelCafe. You'll see captured images of our guests instantly and project updates as well.