The latest post on Craig Newmark’s personal blog: My black-headed grosbeaks are back!
kryptonkay also pointed out this item he posted the other day: Butterball the hawk is back!
We don’t get as many shots from Craig’s deck these days, but the ones we get are really nice. In a way, it’s like we never really lost CONE Sutro Forest. We just got a dramatic upgrade in the camera’s command-and-control subsystem. 🙂
Identification challenges are fun, but observing behavior is even more fun.
I posted an item the other day about the Green Jay spreading its feathers out in the sun (see Odd jay behavior). I likened it to “anting” (the behavior where birds will spread their feathers on an anthill, or even pick up ants and rub them on themselves), but after a little googling of the subject I guess it would more properly be referred to as sunbathing. Lots of birds do it, perhaps to control mites and other parasites.
Here’s a shot that vanilla got today of a male Red-winged Blackbird sunbathing:
There was a comment of “poor thing” on the photo, but I think the bird is probably fine.
As long as we’re looking at redwings (and let’s face it; with CONE Welder we end up looking at redwings a lot), check out this shot that txbird got of three male redwings engaging in display behavior. Nice epaulettes, eh?
Birds aren’t the only things on the birdcam engaging in interesting behavior. The last few nights we’ve had fun watching this raccoon demonstrate his high-wire skills getting onto and off of the feeder. There are some occasional dicey moments, though, like in this shot by whereismyrobot:
Another behavior that users have been commenting on is the display posture that the male Great-tailed Grackles adopt when they’re trying to look impressive. Here’s a great shot that txbird got May 8 at 3:40 p.m.:
Three minutes later, vanilla got this shot of two males posing, with a female on the right side of the frame:
Actual mating is a behavior I don’t remember us ever getting a shot of during the seven months CONE SF was active, but earlier today thedevilbird and txbird both snapped the same shot of a pair of Inca Doves mating. Here it is:
According to the comments the male dove from that pair is the bird in this shot, taken shortly thereafter by robin54. You can barely make out what appears to be an orange band on the bird’s right leg:
Thanks to everyone for getting these amazing shots!
We just got some more shots of what I’m pretty sure is the same odd-looking dove I posted about yesterday. This is the dove I speculated might be White-tipped, but which Dr. Selma Glasscock of the Welder Wildlife Refuge said she thought was probably a Mourning Dove. Here are the shots I just got; I’ll update with any different shots obtained by other users when the images move out of the one-hour embargo:
Update: Here are three more shots. These were taken by robin54, txbird, and txbird again, respectively:
So, what do we have here? I have a real hard time seeing “Mourning Dove” in these. It it’s a Mourning Dove, something really unusual happened to its tail. I guess that’s possible, but I’m also not seeing the dark spots on the wings, and overall it doesn’t seem slender enough for me.
Look at the fourth shot of the initial batch (the ones taken by me). Is that a white corner on the tail? I think I’m seeing that, which pushes me in the direction (again) of either White-winged or White-tipped. The dark wings contrasting with the lighter body make me think White-tipped, but then again, maybe that’s an illusion caused by the foreshortened view we’re getting. And is there a hint of white under the edge of the wing, especially (again) in that fourth shot by me? The overall color seems more White-winged than White-tipped to me, at least judging by the illustrations in Sibley, but the head markings, especially in that last shot by txbird, seem more consistent with White-tipped.
I don’t know either of those birds from direct observation, so I hesitate to try to call this based on the available images (especially with Dr. Glasscock, an on-site expert with a long history in the area, disagreeing). But I am familiar with Mourning Doves, and I’m having a really hard time interpreting these shots as being one of those.
I’m interested in what others think.
Later update: After googling for photos on the web, I can see that White-winged is right out; the white border on the wing would be clearly visible if this were White-winged. And I’ve found several photos of White-tipped that look an awful lot like this bird.
Even later update: Dr. Glasscock posts in the comments that after seeing these latest shots, she’s changed her mind, and thinks these (and those earlier shots) are in fact a White-tipped Dove. Woohoo! Now let’s see if we can get an official ID in the game.
Still yet later update: The first image I took (the one showing the dove from the back) has now received enough votes to be ID’d as White-Tipped Dove. Yay!
Check out these two hummingbird shots from yesterday afternoon. First is a shot by whereismyrobot, taken at 4:38 p.m.:
This one is by avatar99, taken at 5:51 p.m.:
These look a lot like the male Ruby-throated we’ve seen, except for that strip of blue along the bottom of the gorget. I can’t figure that out at all.
Is that color really there? Could it be an odd artifact of the camera’s response to the bright iridescence of the gorget? I’ve seen some odd camera effects relating to color in the past, but I’ve never noticed anything like this. But if that color is real, that’s a really unusual-looking hummingbird that I can’t match up with anything in my field guide.
Update: I just noticed that two other shots from yesterday have now been classified as Black-chinned Hummingbird, and that makes me wonder: Could this blue we’re seeing in the above shots be the camera’s response to the black-and-purple of the Black-chinned’s throat? (Later update: Oh, and vireo wondered the exact same thing in a comment posted at the same time I was entering the above update.)
Here are the two shots that have been classified as Black-chinned. I’m not sure I agree that they’re definitive, but they’re certainly interesting, and the second shot, especially, has me leaning in the Black-chinned direction. Both shots were by birdbrain, from 6:03 p.m. and 6:08 p.m., respectively:
Anyway, congratulations birdbrain!
I’ve made an HTML version of the checklist Dr. Glasscock forwarded to me. You can view it here: Checklist of Welder Birds.
As the late-night crew on “owl patrol” no doubt noticed, the camera went down last night. Here’s a brief update I received via email from Bryce:
Hi John,
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed yet but CONE has been experiencing some issues tonight. In particular our camera connection seems to be dropping constantly. Unfortunately it’s too late in the night to get in touch with anyone in Texas, but we will start repair work first thing in the morning. Sorry about the current situation – please rest assured we are working as hard as possible to get CONE back up!
In the meantime, I’ve been clicking around at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Birding in Texas sites. Some neat information is available, including a Quick Reference Guide to Texas Hummingbirds (PDF file).
Update: The camera is back up! Hooray!
I’ve mentioned how I’m not sure what species the hummingbirds that aren’t Buff-bellied are; it’s clear that they’re either Ruby-throated or Black-chinned, but without a good view of the color of the male’s throat (which requires that the sun be behind us as we look at him), it’s really hard to distinguish the two.
I missed it at the time, but vireo got a shot of a hummingbird perched on one of the feeder wires yesterday that answered that question:
It’s not a great shot; it’s pretty much impossible to get the camera to focus when zoomed in on a small target like that with most of the field taken up by the more-distant background. But you can see the color of his throat: that’s Ruby-throated red, not Black-chinned purple.
That was pretty cool, but the series of shots that several users got this afternoon were even better. txbird got my favorite:
Awesome shot!
So far we’ve definitely seen Inca Doves in the game, and a few Mourning Doves. These shots from yesterday around 10:50 a.m. show what I’m thinking might a third species: the White-tipped Dove. These were taken by idbirds, rafa, and jamesflowers, respectively:
The checklist of Welder birds forwarded to me by Dr. Selma Glasscock doesn’t list White-tipped Dove at all, though the Sibley range map shows them as being at least close to Welder, and the articles I’ve read on John Rappole’s work refer to them as one of the species suspected of expanding their breeding range into this part of Texas. I’m curious what the rest of you think. In the meantime, check those doves! They aren’t all Incas.
Update: Dr. Selma Glasscock chimes in in the comments: This isn’t a White-tipped (she thinks Mourning Dove, probably), but White-tipped are at the refuge. So keep checking those doves.
Later update: Based on some later images (see More shots of the ‘mystery dove’), Dr. Glasscock has changed her mind, and says she now thinks these shots do show a White-tipped Dove. Yay!
John Rappole, the scientist whose work on shifting bird breeding ranges forms the basis for the scientific goals of the CONE Welder installation, sent a few comments to an email thread with Ken Goldberg (the robotics researcher who is one of the main people behind the CONE project). I was lucky enough to be included on that thread, and John Rappole said it would be okay if I reposted his comments to the blog, so here they are:
Ken,
I checked out the blog. They got just the kind of shots that we had hoped for the Green Jay. Silver left, Green right and Silver left, Black right were both part of a group of six birds that were captured on 30 April at 0700h near the feeders. All six are probably non-breeders (unknown sex and age with no brood patch or cloacal protuberance), probably young of the year from last year. Time will tell. I am hoping that Solon Morse, who is on-site working on rapid range change documentation at Welder for me, will be able to catch one or more of the breeding jays in the vicinity.
It looks like the bloggers are having fun on their own, and their guesses are on target so far – Baltimore Oriole, Painted Bunting, Louisiana Waterthrush, Barn Swallow, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, American Robin, Northern Mockingbird, Indigo Bunting, Buff-bellied Hummingbird, and European Starling are all correct. The only one I would question is the photo shown above the Indigo Bunting entry, which I think is probably a robin rather than a starling – but it doesn’t really matter. I think I will just keep out of the blog, and let them do what they want to do. Responding to their questions could become a full time job!
Best,
John
So there you go. It sounds like what we’re doing is definitely proving useful, especially with the identification of banded birds. With that in mind, here are a few banded-bird shots from the last few days.
First is this shot that txbird took on May 5, showing a rain-soaked Green Jay with a silver band on each leg:
And here’s what I believe is probably a female Brown-headed Cowbird photographed by txbird on May 6, showing a silver band on the right leg (left leg not visible):
Keep those banded-bird shots coming!
Bryce Lee (the main developer of the CONE Welder web interface) is leaving the project soon (because he’s graduating), and he mentioned in the game’s chatroom today that any suggestions or feature requests should be sent via email to support.cone.welder@gmail.com, since that’s what the new development team will be monitoring.
Here are a few suggestions I’ll be sending:
1. It would be nice if the in-game chat was logged somewhere, and had timestamps associated with it, so we could read what people said without needing to stay logged in all the time.
2. It would be nice if the gallery photos could be referenced by ID number, or by URL, as was the case with the old interface at CONE SF. It would make it easier for us to refer to particular photos in chat, or here in the blog.
3. It would be nice if we had the ability to jump to a particular page of thumbnails in the gallery. As it is, the only way to navigate through the gallery is to go click-click-click through the “next” and “prev” buttons, which can become tiresome after a while. Maybe a textbox could be added to give a “Jump to gallery page __” functionality?
4. It would be nice if we could draw a bounding box on the live camera view to zoom in. What I mean is, it would be nice if a box drawn on the live camera view could be interpreted by the system as meaning the same thing as a box drawn in a corresponding location on the panorama. That might make it easier to zoom in quickly on something, as opposed to having to look at the live frame, then mentally translate that into the rectangle you want to draw on the panorama.
That’s what I’ve thought of for now. Feel free to add your own ideas by entering a comment on this item. Thanks.