I've been thinking recently about the way we time runs of this game. Currently it's based on the way I set it up when I started in 2013 - time starts when you land on the ground and "gain control" of Toki Tori. However, upon reflection this is the wrong way to do it, because you can chirp while descending to lure the nearby bird - and in fact, all current runs do this, to my knowledge.

My proposal would be to change timing to begin as soon as the screen starts fading in from the "delete saved data" blackout effect. This would probably add about 4ish seconds to all existing runs, but the timing would then include all time where the player has control of the character. Thoughts?

From "the last fully black frame after resetting" to "the first fully black frame after the ending cutscene"?

Yep, that wording reflects my proposal. (Although I might rephrase "after the ending cutscene" to "after the last frog enters their pipe" to be totally clear.)

Oh, for the record I timed the 37:10 run which I just submitted using this proposed method. If you were to use the existing timing method I think it's 37:06 or so.

I've always had an issue with that start time as well, for the reason as you said, you have control before the timer starts ... even though you're just falling you can still chirp. I agree with the fade black screen start time. Made the edits for all categories, just check my wording so that it makes.