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. 
Several times I tried to get 10 distinct identified species in my 10 shots in a day; it was always a lot of fun, even when I didn’t quite make it. Now that I can play with the metadata, here’s the record of the top “Little Big Days” on the system, ranked (first) by the number of species identified, and (second) by the time of the last shot of the day. That is, if two users both got the same number of species, the “winner” was the user who got their last shot earlier in the day.
Anyway, here’s the top 20 performances on the system judged by those criteria:
+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+-------+ | user | begin | end | count | +----------------+---------------------+---------------------+-------+ | noho_bird_club | 2007-05-18 05:51:10 | 2007-05-18 12:06:25 | 10 | | elanus | 2007-05-12 05:53:19 | 2007-05-12 16:06:32 | 10 | | elanus | 2007-05-05 06:03:41 | 2007-05-05 16:55:51 | 10 | | kitcat | 2007-08-27 08:09:52 | 2007-08-27 17:00:01 | 10 | | vireo | 2007-10-19 09:12:31 | 2007-10-19 17:43:39 | 10 | | elanus | 2007-08-12 09:11:08 | 2007-08-12 19:32:43 | 10 | | noho_bird_club | 2007-05-25 06:23:56 | 2007-05-25 12:18:10 | 9 | | robin54 | 2007-10-26 07:18:31 | 2007-10-26 13:15:46 | 9 | | elanus | 2007-10-19 07:38:19 | 2007-10-19 16:08:34 | 9 | | vireo | 2007-10-26 16:25:52 | 2007-10-26 17:14:26 | 9 | | kitcat | 2007-10-21 11:54:49 | 2007-10-21 17:52:17 | 9 | | vireo | 2007-10-17 13:26:50 | 2007-10-17 18:16:40 | 9 | | noho_bird_club | 2007-05-15 06:38:32 | 2007-05-15 19:27:54 | 9 | | elanus | 2007-10-17 07:35:23 | 2007-10-17 08:46:13 | 8 | | noho_bird_club | 2007-06-01 05:51:48 | 2007-06-01 11:20:14 | 8 | | spurdin | 2007-06-12 08:59:27 | 2007-06-12 15:11:12 | 8 | | elanus | 2007-11-07 13:35:32 | 2007-11-07 16:07:46 | 8 | | robin54 | 2007-10-20 07:58:33 | 2007-10-20 16:35:22 | 8 | | birdbrain | 2007-10-11 09:41:26 | 2007-10-11 18:03:16 | 8 | | birdbrain | 2007-08-10 13:44:09 | 2007-08-10 18:45:09 | 8 | +----------------+---------------------+---------------------+-------+ 20 rows in set (0.22 sec)
As you can see, there were 6 times that a user went 10 for 10; I’m proud that 3 of those were mine. (It probably helped that I was the only person trying to do this 10-for-10 thing most of the time.)
But noho_bird_club is the champion, hands down, in terms of earliest completion of a perfect-10 day: On May 18 he got his 10th shot of a distinct species at 12:06:25 p.m., more than 4 hours earlier in the day than my next-place finish.
Here are the 10 shots he got that day, in order:
American Robin at 5:51:
House Finch at 6:29:
House Sparrow at 7:35:
Pygmy Nuthatch at 8:36:
Chestnut-backed Chickadee (small, but clearly identifiable) at 8:43:
Western Scrub-Jay at 8:48:
Anna’s Hummingbird (a little fuzzy, but again, definitely identifiable) at 8:52:
Mourning Dove, shyly preening but no doubt on the ID, at 10:56:
Several Rock Pigeons on the distant roofline; probably the sketchiest photo of the bunch, but again, for birdcam regulars there’s no question that’s what they are, at 11:42:
And finally, this cute shot of the Dark-eyed Junco looking at us in its reflection in the thistle-seed feeder:
Congratulations, noho_bird_club!
So, who do you think had the most identified species in the game?
(Drumroll, please…)
+----------------+---------+ | user | species | +----------------+---------+ | kryptonkay | 26 | | kitcat | 22 | | annelizabeth | 21 | | birdbrain | 21 | | robin54 | 21 | | killeshin | 20 | | elanus | 19 | | vanilla | 19 | | vireo | 18 | | avatar99 | 18 | | fingerlakes | 17 | | lal | 17 | | spurdin | 17 | | achadamaia | 16 | | rookie | 15 | | teixeira | 15 | | noho_bird_club | 15 | | idbirds | 15 | | sunbird | 14 | | xav | 14 | +----------------+---------+ 20 rows in set (0.36 sec)
Here’s kryptonkay’s count of ID’s per species:
+---------------------------+-------+ | bird | count | +---------------------------+-------+ | White-crowned Sparrow | 1 | | Hooded Oriole | 1 | | Lazuli Bunting | 2 | | Wilson's Warbler | 2 | | Song Sparrow | 2 | | California Towhee | 3 | | Townsend's Warbler | 4 | | Ring-necked Pheasant | 4 | | American Crow | 5 | | Red-tailed Hawk | 9 | | Golden-crowned Sparrow | 16 | | Downy Woodpecker | 47 | | Anna's Hummingbird | 51 | | Rock Pigeon | 55 | | Allen's Hummingbird | 56 | | Lesser Goldfinch | 64 | | Steller's Jay | 68 | | Chestnut-backed Chickadee | 71 | | Pygmy Nuthatch | 77 | | Black-headed Grosbeak | 77 | | Mourning Dove | 81 | | American Robin | 118 | | Dark-eyed Junco | 123 | | House Sparrow | 145 | | Western Scrub-Jay | 164 | | House Finch | 297 | +---------------------------+-------+ 26 rows in set (0.17 sec)
It’s impressive that she was on-hand for so many of the game’s rarities: the Ring-necked Pheasant, the American Crow, the Red-tailed Hawk, Hooded Oriole, Lazuli Bunting; if there was a rare bird spotted, it’s a good bet that she got a shot of it.
Congratulations, kryptonkay!
I got a little choked up reading all the nice comments people were leaving at this photo taken today by robin54. (And check out the ghostly image of “Casper” left of the T-bar.)
I’m planning to post some retrospective items over the next few days, and I’m certainly planning on reviving posting when the camera goes back up in Texas in March. In the meantime, thanks to everyone for making the CONE Sutro Forest birdcam so much fun.
I came across a link to Julie’s Magic Light Show, and wanted to share. If you like CONE Sutro Forest, you’ll probably like her site. Enjoy!
Update: Of particular interest to recent birdcamming, check out this page on her site: Downy or Hairy?
Craig posted a 24-second video to YouTube back on July 28 showing a Scrub Jay on the suet feeder and a Steller’s Jay on the deck railing. Check it out:
The audio track is fairly tantalizing. I mean, it’s nice to know what TV Craig watches (sounds like a local news program), but are those birds I can hear in the background?? I’m pretty sure there’s a House Finch in there, at least. Next time, please turn down the TV!
For bonus points, tell me what you think that bird is flying by from right to left in the background at about the 18-second mark. I have a guess, but I’m not at all confident about it.
Anyway, thanks, Craig! More video, please!
The seesaw battle for the top of the leaderboard continues, with noho_bird_club taking the top spot back from fingerlakes. Here are the standings as of a few minutes ago:
Congratulations, noho_bird_club!
I spoke over-broadly about noho_bird_club kicking all our butts in scoring. He’s kicking all our butts except one: fingerlakes’. Because fingerlakes, as of this evening, is the new top-scoring user in the system:
Congratulations, fingerlakes!
Sorry, sunbird; your time atop the leaderboard was oh-so-brief. We’ve got a new leader now: noho_bird_club.
Congratulations!
I mentioned in an update to a previous item that I no longer think the system has been intentionally nerfed. From some email correspondence I’ve had with the CONE SF system’s creators, I now believe that all the slowdowns I’ve been perceiving as intentional actions are in fact just garden-variety slowness resulting from performance issues with the site’s database.
In an email I got early this morning from Bryce Lee, who is listed on the site’s credits page as being responsible for “Database and Website Design and Engineering”, he mentioned that “tomorrow, we are rolling out the classification fix and will be addressing the my gallery shortly.” So I popped into the system just now (at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time) and entered a couple of classifications, and the result page popped right up within a second or two. That’s awesome!
Go, Bryce!