With the change of the seasons, we’re getting some new birds at CONE Welder, including the game’s first official Common Grackle. This photo, taken October 1 by birdbrain, was the first shot to be officially ID’d:
There have been a number of shots since then (some misidentified as Great-tailed Grackle). My favorite image of the bird so far is this (currently unidentified) one, taken October 1 by txbird:
I look forward to seeing one of these with the camera myself. 🙂
Look what birdbrain caught in the bare-limbed tree shortly after 4:00 p.m. today: three shots of the game’s first Eastern Kingbird!
Congratulations, birdbrain!
I noticed a photo of this attractive adult male Lesser Goldfinch in Craig’s personal blog today, and when I commented on the posting he pointed me to an additional photo of it at smugmug. Check it out:
Thanks to Chris McLean (sprucebuddhas), we have a new view of the Welder bird feeding area, and of a Red-shouldered Hawk watching for breakfast.
sprucebuddhas: “Wondering how birding was before 9:30 cdt this a.m. caught this culprit but unfortunately not the h-bird that was sitting on the branch next to him. He flew off while being photographed. Shy I guess.
It is probably one of the pair that is nested ~100m away and defied several attempts to capture to be fitted with a radio transmitter last year by one of the Welder fellows. He tried to capture with mice in a wire cage as well as a live barred owl on loan from a rehabber through Texas Tech.”
There’s still some disagreement about what the earlier images showed (see the excellent summary of Texas birder comments posted by Rafa in the comments to the earlier item), but we now have a number of images that have achieved the standard for a consensus ID of Eastern Phoebe. Yay!
Here are a couple of shots that I think are among the best so far. Here’s one taken by loughman1 at 9:03 this morning:
Here’s another taken by rafa at 10:37:
Not the greatest shots in the world, but I think I’m leaning in the direction of the consensus ID. Congratulations on a new bird for the game!
Update: On further reflection, and considering birderbf’s comment and some more-recent shots of what looks like the same bird, I think I’m now leaning the other way: That this is actually an Eastern Wood-Peewee, rather than an Eastern Phoebe.
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
Woohoo, another new species. None of the shots taken yesterday of this bird were especially great shots, but you can see enough of it for the ID: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Here are shots by txbird and loughlan1, respectively:
I wonder if the people watching the camera live got to see the bird doing its characteristic sideways tail-flicking. In any event, congratulations!
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!