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?