The Networked Bird Observatory Blog

Livening up a dull afternoon on August 16, a yellow bird appeared briefly on a wire in view of our Welder camera. What species? Tanager or oriole?

Three people saw the bird, and two were fast enough with the camera button to give us a total of three pictures, all taken within eight seconds of each other. And then the bird was gone, and has not been seen since.

Examination of the photos allowed us to eliminate tanager and focus on oriole – but which species? For the record here, the Welder Checklist lists both Orchard and Baltimore Oriole as Uncommon in summer, Orchard as Uncommon in fall, and Hooded, Audubon’s, and Bullocks as Accidental.

The pictures were taken at a distance, and the camera resolution is not high. The pictures show the back and side of the bird, but do not show the size and shape of the beak, or the colors of the breast and belly.

And despite it being the same bird, the colors on the back seem greenish yellow in one picture (37736 - kryptonkay), but orangish yellow in another (37740 - txbird). How big is the bird, what is the relative length of the tail, is the dark color of the tail significant, can the wing bar pattern tell us anything, why is the light area over the eye visible in one picture not visible in the others, how does this bird compare with other orioles seen at Welder, how does it compare with pictures we can find in field guides or on the web? Various of us consulted Sibley, National Geographic, the new Peterson, Birds of Texas, the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, and online All About Birds, and Birds of North America. We all rued the lack of photographs showing immature birds.

Initial impressions suggested Orchard Oriole; but within a couple of hours Baltimore Oriole was added to the possibilities. Late in the evening, Bullock’s Oriole was suggested. As it became clear that none of us could provide a definitive identification, rafa posted the pictures on two listserves: “birdforum” and “texbirds,” requesting comments. Several apparently authoritative responses were received – supporting either Orchard or Baltimore. One of the more intriguing came from someone who said Orchard, and added “The plant in front looks like croton, and I’m comparing the bird’s size to the leaves.” Loughman cropped the pictures, and enhanced both the resolution and size (below) to make it easier to examine the birds. It’s easier, but not enough for confident identification.

The mystery oriole remains a mystery.

Thanks to Ken Burton and Rita Colwell for their kind help with this identification.

Lamont Brown, Katherine Miller and Keith Arnold from Texbirds list were so great to help us too with the Id. Thanks a lot!!

jbm33206 and steveo from BirdForum  also contributed comments. We are most appreciative.

For anyone interested in further reading about identification of Texas Orioles, check the following links:
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?p=147041#post147041
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?p=148924#post148924

A number of users got shots of the following bird this morning. Forty-five minutes of chat discussion ensued (that I missed; we really need a chat log feature). Folks seem to be leaning toward Summer Tanager (which is what I voted for, before hearing about the discussion), but at least one user is suggesting that we consider Clay-colored Robin.

Check out the images. These were taken by txbird, loughman1, txbird, vanilla, and ohiobirder, respectively.

Here’s a shot of a Clay-colored Robin that txbird found on the Web for comparison:

There’s a grayish color to this bird’s head that is really interesting to me, and that I can’t really reconcile with Sibley’s illustration of either of the birds we’re considering.

I think on balance I prefer Summer Tanager for this bird’s ID, which is a shame, since Clay-colored Robin would be a new bird for CONE. But it’s not on the Welder checklist, nor is it mentioned in the list of neotropical “species of interest” in the CONE Welder study. And really, looking at these images, it looks more like a Summer Tanager than either the web photo or the Sibley illustration of the Clay-colored Robin (a bird I’ve never seen in real life).

But either way, it’s a really interesting series of shots.

Here are some of my favorite shots from the last few days:

birdbrain got this great shot of a snake (a diamondback rattlesnake, maybe? any herpetology experts want to chime in?) back on July 30:

After a long dry spell, several users have taken photos of Wild Turkeys lately, including this shot with two turkeys by kryptonkay on July 31:

Today (actually, yesterday now; August 1), tinyang got this shot of a bird that’s a real mystery for me. I’m really not sure what to make of it. An Inca Dove in an unusual body position, maybe? Are those white feathers on the tail?

Several photos were taken yesterday of a female Cardinal feeding a begging Bronzed Cowbird, including this great shot by rafa:

I didn’t realize that Bronzed Cowbirds were nest parasites, just like Brown-headed Cowbirds, but according to Wikipedia, all cowbirds are nest parasites. So it looks like this is a shot of a fledgling begging for food from its adoptive mother.

It’s actually a pretty old image, but this shot by robin54 from back in early May recently picked up enough votes to get an official ID as the game’s first Baltimore Oriole:

The color definitely has a “Baltimore” feel to it. Anyway, I’ll take it. Better late than never. Congratulations, robin54!

P.S. We now have access to the nifty new linkable pages for individual images at cone.berkeley.edu, so I’m going back to my old CONE Sutro practice of making the uploaded images clickable links. Bigtime thanks to the new development team at CONE. Please keep up the good work.

We should arrange for hurricanes more often. User yan snapped the following photo that I’m inclined to call an American Robin, the first for CONE Welder, this afternoon at 2:40:

Here’s a zoomed-in version of the shot:

Looks like a Robin to me. If we get the ID, that will be two new species for the game in one day. Not bad.

Update: We’ve now got the ID. Yay!

Check out these two shots that txbird got this afternoon around 3:30:

I’m leaning toward “bunting” on these, based on the general shape and pattern, as well as the fact that it’s perched on the same plant we’ve seen buntings feeding on a bunch over the last month or so. Especially in that second shot, I’m getting a subtle sense of some blue coloration — could it maybe be an immature male Indigo Bunting? We had a single beautiful shot of an adult male Indigo Bunting way back near the start of CONE Welder, on May 3, and then five more shots of a male on June 24. The range maps in Sibley, and the Welder checklist, both seem to suggest that it’s more of a spring and fall migrant than a summer resident, but I can’t think what else that bird might be.

I’m curious what others think.

New species today, with three shots, all by rafa:

Easy to mistake for an Inca Dove to a casual glance, but check out the dark markings on the wings. Congratulations, rafa!

I had overlooked this, but rafa alerted me to it in email. Check out this very interesting shot taken by breffni yesterday at 8:48 a.m.:

That’s a male Red-winged Blackbird in the middle of the shot, but what is that bird in the lower left? In the comments on the shot, idbirds asserts that it isn’t a Northern Mockingbird because of the length of the tail, and suggests it could be a juvenile Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.

Personally, I think either bird is possible. That tail doesn’t necessarily look longer than a mockingbird’s to me. The end of the tail also doesn’t look much like what Sibley shows for the juvenile Scissor-tailed (a bird I don’t know from personal experience, so I’m kind of dependent on field guides). The Sibley illustration seems to show that the tail of the juvenile flycatcher is distinctly notched; this shot seems to be right in the middle between the squared-off tail tip of a mockingbird and the notched tip of the flycatcher.

I’m curious what others think. Is this a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher? Or a Northern Mockingbird? I’m pretty sure it’s one or the other, but I’m really up in the air as to which one.

Thanks to breffni for getting this very interesting shot, and to rafa for calling my attention to it.

Here are some shots from today of what looks like a new bird for the game, at least if we can figure out what it is. These four shots were all by txbird; either no one else was on the system at the time, no one else was paying attention, or no one else had any shots left:

It’s clearly a flycatcher, and the overall color pattern says Myiarchus to me. If I were seeing this bird around my Southern California home, I wouldn’t even wonder; I’d call it an Ash-throated Flycatcher and be done with it (which I realize is a little bit bogus; rarities happen, after all). But in the south-central Texas environs of CONE Welder things are more complicated.

Sibley shows three species of Myiarchus flycatchers near CONE Welder in the summertime: Ash-throated, Brown-crested (which is a species of interest in the shifting-breeding-range study), and (maybe) Great Crested. The Welder checklist gives the following:

The three species are quite similar-looking, and even though we’ve got a number of excellent shots here, I can’t say that I’m confident based on appearance which one of the three birds to call it. But overall I guess if I had to pick something I’d pick Ash-throated Flycatcher: It looks as much like that to me as it does either of the others, and the Sibley range map and the Welder checklist both agree that it’s unambiguously there in summer. But I really don’t know.

I’d definitely be interested in whether Dr. Glasscock has any opinion about this bird’s ID. And of course, it goes without saying that I’ll be watching closely to see if we can get any more shots of this very interesting bird. Thanks, txbird, for doing such a great job on the camera!

Here are a bunch of shots of a mystery bird from earlier today. I’m assuming these are all of the same bird, but I wasn’t on the camera at the time, and don’t really know that. The shots are by birdbrain, txbird, birdbrain, kryptonkay, birdbrain, and kryptonkay, respectively:

That hint of a light eyestripe running back from the eye in the first shot gives me pause; the first thing I thought when I saw that was, whoa, is that a female House Sparrow? But even with that, I think I’d vote for a female Painted Bunting. It’s the second shot that pushes me that way. The bird appears to be feeding on the same plant’s seeds that we’ve been seeing the Painted Bunting feeding on lately, and it’s going about it in what looks to me like a fairly bunting-like manner.

What do the rest of you think?