The Networked Bird Observatory Blog

As the late-night crew on “owl patrol” no doubt noticed, the camera went down last night. Here’s a brief update I received via email from Bryce:

Hi John,

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed yet but CONE has been experiencing some issues tonight. In particular our camera connection seems to be dropping constantly. Unfortunately it’s too late in the night to get in touch with anyone in Texas, but we will start repair work first thing in the morning. Sorry about the current situation - please rest assured we are working as hard as possible to get CONE back up!

In the meantime, I’ve been clicking around at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Birding in Texas sites. Some neat information is available, including a Quick Reference Guide to Texas Hummingbirds (PDF file).

Update: The camera is back up! Hooray!

I’ve mentioned how I’m not sure what species the hummingbirds that aren’t Buff-bellied are; it’s clear that they’re either Ruby-throated or Black-chinned, but without a good view of the color of the male’s throat (which requires that the sun be behind us as we look at him), it’s really hard to distinguish the two.

I missed it at the time, but vireo got a shot of a hummingbird perched on one of the feeder wires yesterday that answered that question:

It’s not a great shot; it’s pretty much impossible to get the camera to focus when zoomed in on a small target like that with most of the field taken up by the more-distant background. But you can see the color of his throat: that’s Ruby-throated red, not Black-chinned purple.

That was pretty cool, but the series of shots that several users got this afternoon were even better. txbird got my favorite:

Awesome shot!

So far we’ve definitely seen Inca Doves in the game, and a few Mourning Doves. These shots from yesterday around 10:50 a.m. show what I’m thinking might a third species: the White-tipped Dove. These were taken by idbirds, rafa, and jamesflowers, respectively:

The checklist of Welder birds forwarded to me by Dr. Selma Glasscock doesn’t list White-tipped Dove at all, though the Sibley range map shows them as being at least close to Welder, and the articles I’ve read on John Rappole’s work refer to them as one of the species suspected of expanding their breeding range into this part of Texas. I’m curious what the rest of you think. In the meantime, check those doves! They aren’t all Incas.

Update: Dr. Selma Glasscock chimes in in the comments: This isn’t a White-tipped (she thinks Mourning Dove, probably), but White-tipped are at the refuge. So keep checking those doves.

Later update: Based on some later images (see More shots of the ‘mystery dove’), Dr. Glasscock has changed her mind, and says she now thinks these shots do show a White-tipped Dove. Yay!

John Rappole, the scientist whose work on shifting bird breeding ranges forms the basis for the scientific goals of the CONE Welder installation, sent a few comments to an email thread with Ken Goldberg (the robotics researcher who is one of the main people behind the CONE project). I was lucky enough to be included on that thread, and John Rappole said it would be okay if I reposted his comments to the blog, so here they are:

Ken,

I checked out the blog. They got just the kind of shots that we had hoped for the Green Jay. Silver left, Green right and Silver left, Black right were both part of a group of six birds that were captured on 30 April at 0700h near the feeders. All six are probably non-breeders (unknown sex and age with no brood patch or cloacal protuberance), probably young of the year from last year. Time will tell. I am hoping that Solon Morse, who is on-site working on rapid range change documentation at Welder for me, will be able to catch one or more of the breeding jays in the vicinity.

It looks like the bloggers are having fun on their own, and their guesses are on target so far - Baltimore Oriole, Painted Bunting, Louisiana Waterthrush, Barn Swallow, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, American Robin, Northern Mockingbird, Indigo Bunting, Buff-bellied Hummingbird, and European Starling are all correct. The only one I would question is the photo shown above the Indigo Bunting entry, which I think is probably a robin rather than a starling - but it doesn’t really matter. I think I will just keep out of the blog, and let them do what they want to do. Responding to their questions could become a full time job!

Best,

John

So there you go. It sounds like what we’re doing is definitely proving useful, especially with the identification of banded birds. With that in mind, here are a few banded-bird shots from the last few days.

First is this shot that txbird took on May 5, showing a rain-soaked Green Jay with a silver band on each leg:

And here’s what I believe is probably a female Brown-headed Cowbird photographed by txbird on May 6, showing a silver band on the right leg (left leg not visible):

Keep those banded-bird shots coming!

Bryce Lee (the main developer of the CONE Welder web interface) is leaving the project soon (because he’s graduating), and he mentioned in the game’s chatroom today that any suggestions or feature requests should be sent via email to support.cone.welder@gmail.com, since that’s what the new development team will be monitoring.

Here are a few suggestions I’ll be sending:

1. It would be nice if the in-game chat was logged somewhere, and had timestamps associated with it, so we could read what people said without needing to stay logged in all the time.

2. It would be nice if the gallery photos could be referenced by ID number, or by URL, as was the case with the old interface at CONE SF. It would make it easier for us to refer to particular photos in chat, or here in the blog.

3. It would be nice if we had the ability to jump to a particular page of thumbnails in the gallery. As it is, the only way to navigate through the gallery is to go click-click-click through the “next” and “prev” buttons, which can become tiresome after a while. Maybe a textbox could be added to give a “Jump to gallery page __” functionality?

4. It would be nice if we could draw a bounding box on the live camera view to zoom in. What I mean is, it would be nice if a box drawn on the live camera view could be interpreted by the system as meaning the same thing as a box drawn in a corresponding location on the panorama. That might make it easier to zoom in quickly on something, as opposed to having to look at the live frame, then mentally translate that into the rectangle you want to draw on the panorama.

That’s what I’ve thought of for now. Feel free to add your own ideas by entering a comment on this item. Thanks.

One of the neat things about CONE Welder is that we have the floodlights at night, and a lot more mammals to look at. I confess I’m not as interested in them as I am in birds, but that’s just personal prejudice, mostly. I’m all about combatting prejudice, so here are some of the more-interesting mammal shots taken lately.

Vanilla got this shot that shows both species of Welder’s wild pigs at the same time: I believe that’s a Javelina on the left, and a Feral Hog on the right:

Here’s a shot that achadamaia got of a Nine-banded Armadillo:

Here are two shots from a larger series taken by vanilla last night showing why it’s important that the feeders are suspended on wires — and why it doesn’t always matter:

Finally, here are a couple of shots I took this morning. It really looks to me like this White-tail doe is pregnant. How fun would it be to see a new fawn taking its first steps into the meadow? (Cue the Bambi music.)

Dr. Selma Glasscock at the Welder Wildlife Refuge was good enough to forward me a checklist of birds seen at the refuge. I want to create an HTML version of this for convenient web browsing, but until I have a chance to do that I wanted to share the Word document that she forwarded to me. It breaks down bird species into common, uncommon, occasional, rare, and accidental, and gives those designations for each of the four seasons (Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter). I can see this being very useful to us in trying to figure out some of the trickier IDs.

Here it is: Birds of the Welder Wildlife Refuge (75K MSWord document).

Update: Now available in HTML form for online viewing: Checklist of Welder Birds.

Here are a number of shots from the last few days that have me scratching my head:

rafa got this shot yeterday, though I didn’t notice it until it was pointed out in the comments today:

I’m not sure what I’m looking at there; it seems to be a male oriole, or maybe a male Black-headed Grosbeak, but it’s hard for me to say what’s going on at the top of the bird; is that the back of its head? Its shoulders, with its head ducked down out of sight?

Compare it with these two photos taken today by robin54 and kryptonkay, respectively:

I’m getting an oriole feeling from these images, but beyond that I’m not prepared to commit myself.

Here’s another shot of what looks very much like a woodpecker, perhaps the Golden-fronted Woodpecker that was possibly photographed on the same tree yesterday. This shot was taken by avatar99 at 9:15 a.m. today:

Here’s a shot that txbird got today at 11:57 a.m.; the bird is hard to see until you notice it perched in the sticks on the left side of the image:

It’s hard for me to say what it is, but compare it to this next one. This is a bird that I really wanted to get a closer shot of, but by the time we got done wrestling over the camera it flew off:

birderbf mentioned in chat that he or she got a shot of this bird, too, and ID’d it as a female Painted Bunting. Looking at the shot I got, I could totally see that; I’m looking forward to seeing any other shots that show up after they’re done being “embargoed” for the hour that has to elapse before players other than the person who took the shot can see them.

Update: birderbf and thedevilbird both got a shot almost, but not quite, identical to the one I got, with their two shots being actually identical to each other. Here’s the shot they got:

So again, I don’t think I’m completely comfortable with calling this a female Painted Bunting based on these shots alone, but it certainly looks as much like one as anything else I can find, and I’m willing to defer to someone who has actual experience with seeing the bird in real life (which I don’t).

I got a couple of good shots of two different Green Jays this morning, showing their leg bands. Both jays have a silver band on the left leg. One of them has a black band on the right leg, while the other has a green band on the right leg:

I assume it’s worth our keeping track of the banded birds we see, especially for species of interest in the shifting-breeding-range study (like the Green Jay).

I got this shot a few minutes ago. I’m posting it here even though it’s not a great shot because I think it shows a new species in the game. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what species it is. The bird, which was walking fairly quickly along the edge of that muddy patch left of the pond, is near the top of the shot, walking from right to left:

I’m pretty sure that’s either a Louisiana or a Northern Waterthrush. I’ve emailed Dr. Selma Glasscock at Welder to ask if they have any information about what species have been seen at the refuge, and what dates they’re typically seen on; that might help narrow things down. But in the meantime, don’t forget to check that muddy patch. It’s been producing really good birds.