The Networked Bird Observatory Blog

There have been a lot of great birds, and great shots, lately. Here are some of my favorites.

I confess I’m getting rather blasé about buntings. Yes, the males are gorgeous, and I’ll always watch them if a get a chance, but human nature being what it is, after looking at 100 photos of them over the span of a few days I start to think, hm, I wonder if there are any blackbirds to look at… Still, even a cynic like me has to sit up and take notice when there are two spectacular bunting males, painted and indigo, feeding together. Here’s a shot loughman1 got early on the morning of April 16; rafa, vanilla, and budgieface were all lucky enough to get shots of the same pairing:

User lynch got this neat shot of the white-winged dove showing off its field marks later on the morning of April 16:

The rose-breasted grosbeak has put in a few appearances lately; here’s a shot taken the morning of April 17 by idbirds:

User raven was one of several to get shots of this snake (which idbirds ID’d as a western diamondback in chat) hanging out under the feeders on the afternoon of April 17:

achadamaia got this spectacular shot of a male red-winged blackbird flashing his epaulets the afternoon of April 17:

rafa got this serenely beautiful shot of the male painted bunting on the morning of April 19:

Several users got amazing shots of the red-shouldered hawk on April 19. Here’s one by budgieface:

Here’s a neat closeup of the same bird’s bands (as well as the business end of its talons) by rafa:

txbird got this cool, if slightly out of focus, shot of the hawk looking right at the camera:

It was oriole day yesterday, April 20. Here’s a shot by birderbf of two male orioles (orchard on the left; Baltimore on the right) on the feeder at the same time:

Here’s a nice shot of the orchard oriole; this was taken by eyes23blue:

annelizabeth got this beautiful shot of the Baltimore oriole:

krypotonkay got this shot in which the Baltimore oriole shows off the orange corners of his tail:

All in all, I’d say it has been some of the most exciting times on the birdcam in a long time. Thanks to everyone who’s been taking the time to watch and get these fantastic photos!

It was kind of an emotional roller coaster for CONE Welder users yesterday. loughman1 emailed in the morning that the camera was back up, if somewhat slow. A bunch of users got in and snapped some photos, until about 10:20 a.m. (PDT), when it stopped working again. Which wouldn’t have been very newsworthy, except that one of the species they got photos of was the Indigo Bunting, a bird that previously had been photographed only twice in the history of the game.

Here’s a shot taken by loughman1:

Here’s a slightly later shot taken by txbird:

Very cool! Now that we know the Indigo Bunting is around, let’s get that camera fully functional again, so we can get some more shots, maybe even one to rival this one, taken by rafa way back on May 3, 2008, and currently ranked #4 in the game’s all-time list of favorite photos:

It occurs to me that we’re coming up on CONE Welder’s one-year anniversary. The earliest shot in the game was taken on April 18, 2008. Here it is:

If you click through to that image in the dashboard, and start working your way forward in time, you can get a preview of the spring birds we can hope to see when the camera comes back fully, including this snazzy fellow:

We took 43 photos of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak in April, 2008, another 27 in May, 2008, and not a single one since then. I think it’s high time we got another. Don’t you?