Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds/Archive 71

who wants to work on what...

Righto, keeping the production line going (seems to have slowed a little...). I have been working on orange-bellied parrot and letter-winged kite (both sporadically), and have a hankering to do red-tailed tropicbird or masked booby as I have just seen a bunch of them in Norfolk Island up close. I noticed red-headed woodpecker was in a bit of a sorry state and started tinkering today. I can see RileyBugz wants to work on yellow-bellied sapsucker and tree swallow at some point. Our collaboration page has parrot, Toco toucan and Corvus, plus Sabine's Sunbird were/are working on Steller's sea eagle...but just run out of a bit of puff on that one as the whole superlative thing is a bit of a quagmire and the sources and text don't exactly match...sigh...I can see Aa77zz has been working on the Crowned pigeons too...so anyway, just seeing if anyone has any enthusiasm for one of these or something else. Seeing where we're up to. One way of keeping up momentum is buffing something that is already GA or a collaboration. I am open to suggestions, or I'll just tinker if no-one is up for a collaboration. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:14, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm still in extinct bird territory, and would like to get Lord Howe swamphen somewhere, but I need the entries about the bird from Ripley 1977 and Taylor & Perlo 2000... Adityavagarwal was also interested in collaborating on Seychelles parakeet, but I haven't heard anything from him for a while. And by the way, now that this projects's hot articles[1] link is working, it should be easier to see what's being worked on. FunkMonk (talk) 09:28, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm still working on cleaning up after the IOCv8.1 changes. Splits can involve significant changes to existing articles. I like to briefly explain the background and cite the studies behind the decision to split species. - Aa77zz (talk) 10:04, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

FunkMonk, if it's any use - I happen to have the 1998 version of Taylor and Perlo here, and could send you a scan of the two pages in question. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:26, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I assume there would be little new info in the 2000 edition. I'll send you an email now so you have somewhere to send it to. FunkMonk (talk) 11:28, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Alright, sent. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, got it! FunkMonk (talk) 12:08, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I find (recently) extinct articles too depressing... :( Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:33, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I just noticed that Wikipedia:There is a deadline seems to indicate that documenting recently extinct animals (as exemplified by a photo of a golden toad) is part of saving potentially lost knowledge, which is a nice way to look at it... Or at least that's how I choose to interpret it! FunkMonk (talk) 13:46, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Cas and I are working on the red-tailed tropicbird. RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 03:12, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Can some of you who haven't looked at preening (bird) in a while have a gander and let us know what you think is still missing? I know the lead needs expansion, and I'd like to add a bit more about feather structure (so an explanation of "zipping up" the barbules makes more sense), but otherwise, I think it's pretty close now. I'm hoping we can take this one to GA soon. MeegsC (talk) 11:17, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

• Lord Howe swamphen is now at GAN, but there are two sources I'd like to incorporate before taking it to FAC, which I've listed here:[2] Anyone have access to either source? FunkMonk (talk) 18:08, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Category discussion

Category:Birds of the Miombo is currently being discussed at this CFD. Members of this project are invited to join the discussion. DexDor ^(talk) 17:55, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Identify bird based on line art

This image - File:PSF-W1040011.png - includes line art of a bird. It was made to be used in an encyclopedia, so we can assume it's very representative. And, based on the way the PSF images are laid out, I'm pretty sure it's a species whose name begins with "wood". Can anyone supply more details? DS (talk) 18:41, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

'Tis a woodcock. 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 18:49, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Should be a woodcock then (I see I was beat to it), but not sure we can say what exact species. FunkMonk (talk) 18:51, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't know that exact species matters here, since it is just a sketch. File:Woodcock (line art) (PSF-W1040011 (cropped)).png looks good? DS (talk) 07:00, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Undescribed species

Spectacled flowerpecker - opinions? Shyamal (talk) 05:46, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

...huh. Not sure whether to be pleased that an unnamed species is treated like an elusive celebrity; annoyed about having what should be a species treatment filled with excited fluff from individual observations; or surprised that the bugger still hasn't been described after eight years and that much press. - Based on coverage alone I suppose this is here to stay, but it does feel like a peculiar version of WP:TOOSOON. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

We do have a category for that kind of stuff, Category:Undescribed tetrapod species, though most of the content is extinct animals. FunkMonk (talk) 08:40, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree that this is too notable to be dismissed. As such, I have re-arranged the article to match other WP:BIRD species pages and toned down the "excited fluff" to the observations recorded so far. Loopy30 (talk) 19:57, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Communal roosting

An article of interest to this project—Communal roosting—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Mathglot (talk) 06:19, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Masked booby

Am buffing this article for FAC...but don't have access to HBW online. I have at hand all the HANZAB material but that gives the pantropical species a somewhat australian focus. Anyone want to add and collaborate for FAC? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:06, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

IUCN status for species the IUCN splits but that aren't commonly split.

In the pheasant pigeon article the following situation occurs: The IUCN recognizes 4 species instead of 1 species with 4 subspecies, and has adapted the IUCN states to that by removing the overal status from the website and only publishing the states from the separate (sub)species. I think it would be best to remove the status from the article as well and only put the subspecies states on the page because we can't assume that the IUCN would still grant the species this status these days. However, as someone has put the status back, I would like to hear what other people think about it.Jarne Colman (talk) 22:28, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

A good question. Ummm, there is a thing for all species to have an IUCN status in the taxobox where possible. Really need to read some more to opine Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:12, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I wouldn't include IUCN status where the species concept that IUCN follows differs from Wikipedia. At the very least, there should be a note that the species concepts are different. And my impression is that more frequently, the situation with pheasant pigeon is reversed; Wikipedia splits species that IUCN still lumps. Plantdrew (talk) 15:12, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

List of Columbidae species

Hello. I would like to ask why the Dodo is not included in the List of Columbidae species? Thank you in advance. TaurenMoonlighting (talk) 17:15, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Dunno, actually. It's not just recent species in that list - e.g. Choiseul pigeon is in there as well. Add it? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:26, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Ending the system of portals

Hello, there's a proposal to delete all Wikipedia portals. Please see the discussion here. --NaBUru38 (talk) 13:59, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

The discussion has been moved here. N. Jain ^{(talk to me)} 20:31, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Some fish eagle or other

See Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#Should set index links be disambiguated? for an open discussion, which includes my opinion. If anyone can identify the correct binomial name, that would be one of those little problems solved. Thanks in advance, Narky Blert (talk) 23:05, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Sattal is on the Himalayan foothills where there could be a Lesser fish eagle but lower down in the river valleys there is Pallas' fish eagle - in the absence of a citation, the best solution is to remove it. Shyamal (talk) 04:55, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

TY! Narky Blert (talk) 11:08, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

RfC on categorizing by year of formal description

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Request for comment: categorizing by year of formal description for a discussion on possible guidelines for categorizing by year of formal description of a species. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Ibera seedeater propose for deletion?

Hi all, I've proposed deleting Ibera seedeater because of a lack of sources for the topic. Only 1 primary source exists, and no secondary sources exist, so it's not really possible to provide a NPOV. Also, at this time I don't know if there's enough consensus in the scientific community regarding the status of this taxon as a distinct species. Feel free to comment here or on the article's talk page. N. Jain ^{(talk to me)} 00:37, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

It is listed here. Page possibly a little premature but no point deleting it now Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:55, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Request for help from an admin

I need help from an admin to move an article. I want to delete the current Yellow grosbeak article (which is a redirect) and move Mexican yellow grosbeak to Yellow grosbeak.

Background

The moves are a result of the changes to the English names by the IOC. Previously there were two articles on "yellow grosbeaks":

• Pheucticus chrysopeplus previously Mexican yellow grosbeak - now Yellow grosbeak
• Pheucticus chrysogaster previously Southern yellow grosbeak - now Golden grosbeak - I've moved this myself

Many thanks - Aa77zz (talk) 21:46, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

 Done Shyamal (talk) 01:34, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Another move request

I would like help from an admin to move Snowfinch to Montifringilla (currently a redirect). For reasons I don't understand, I'm unable to move this myself.

Background

Previously the 8 snowfinches were all placed in the genus Montifringilla. According to the IOC, HBW alive and H&M4 pp.307-308 (but not Clements) they are now split into three genera: Montifringilla (3 species), Onychostruthus (monotypic white-rumped snowfinch) and Pyrgilauda (4 species). The most recent molecular phylogenetic study (Qu et al 2006) supports this split. Following the move I'll edit the Snowfinch redirect page and list the three genera.

Many thanks - Aa77zz (talk) 09:25, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

 Done @Aa77zz: swapped article and redirect, edit away. (not an admin but have pagemover) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:20, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

eBird hotspot links

Wikidata now has a property, eBird hotspot ID (P5200), for the IDs for nature reserves and other places ("hotposts") on eBird. I have made {{EBird hotspot}} to make it easy to add links to relevant pages, using that ID; see, for example, Armash Important Bird Area#External links. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:43, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

original information from Oklahoma City Community College and Cornel Online (All about Birds)

This is John(Y-B-F-L)Bates John(Y-B-F-L) (talk) 13:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC) Hello I made original deductions from information published on Journal/Website All about birds, if that's not a peer reviewed journal then nothing is. Also you kept my original information but removed my cite. That is plagiarism. Most universities ask you to swear not to do that. John(Y-B-F-L) (talk) 13:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

John(Y-B-F-L) keeps adding WP:OR without any verifiable sources, and there are no web links to "All about birds" despite what he says above. I've removed his GF edits that I've found, but I may have missed some, which presumably accounts for the plagiarism claim. That's clearly nonsense since if he posted the edit, nobody is copying him. I assume he means attribution, but the edit history is his attribution, as for all of us. Also, any text posted here is can be freely edited, copied and distributed in accordance with our T&C anyway. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:50, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak: John has only 36 edits; please read WP:BITE, and see if you can reach out and assist him, in a collegial manner. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:54, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   07:27, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Impending changes

Another study see doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2018.03.029 - which suggests among others that Chaetornis striata will probably move to the genus Schoenicola - Shyamal (talk) 04:18, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Renaming hawking and gleaning?

I started a discussion here about possibly renaming hawking (birds) and gleaning (birds) to reflect that these are strategies also used by insectivorous bats. Weigh in if you have suggestions. Enwebb (talk) 01:54, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

These terms are so part of common everyday birding jargon that I don't know if renaming these articles would be universally acceptable. At least with respect to hawking I can understand your argument, as I know the term as "flycatching" (possibly more appropriate?). However, flycatchers are not the only birds that display this behavior, as I've observed the occasional wood-warbler and even a species of bulbul exhibiting such behavior. In fact, there are quite a few avian taxa where this is a common predation strategy. I am sure there is literature published on bulbuls and wood-warblers (Parulidae) about this behavior.N. Jain ^{(talk to me)} 01:54, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

New Zealand work

People here might be interested in the Wikipedia:GLAM/New Zealand Wikipedian at Large. User:Giantflightlessbirds is encouraging improvements to articles about New Zealand's endangered species. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Grey jay move proposal

I have started a discussion on changing the title of the article on the Grey jay. If members of this project are interested in providing input, please see the discussion. Thanks. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:17, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Wintering birds CFD

Several categories such as Category:Wintering birds of East Africa are being discussed at CFD. Members of this project are invited to join the discussion. DexDor ^(talk) 16:13, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Yep, I was about to deliver the same notice. :-) A claim's made that bird peeps think the category is useless, so the best way to find out if that's true is to invite them to say so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:31, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Anybody have BNA?

Does anybody happen to have a subscription to the Birds of North America? If so, I would like the appearance section for the tree swallow, so I can add the colours of its beak and tarsus before taking it to FAC. Thanks! RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 15:10, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

RileyBugz your existing Turner ref says bill is black, legs and feet are pale brown. If you're thinking of FAC, note that you don't have any predators listed. I'd also be inclined to dump most/all of the ELs Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:20, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Oh, didn't see that it did. Thanks! RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 15:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I will remove the external links, except to wikispecies and commons. Also, there isn't much on predation, so what little I could find I placed at the end of the breeding section (which is related to survival). RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 16:01, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I shouldn't think it would be a problem to like to xeno-canto.org (for sounds) or IBC (for videos/more pix). MeegsC (talk) 12:56, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Latest IOC update

FYI, the latest update (June 27, 2018) is out from the IOC. Plenty of new changes, Ive already split the white-collared seedeater, and will do others as time allows. Nothing yet on Canada Jay, but the draft template has been placed, so I expect something soon. and given the AOS as already made the Jay change official, I would feel very comfortable changing it as soon as the draft is out....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:36, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

scrub-bird naming

The titles and content for the "scrubbirds", the target of Atrichornithidae and Atrichornis, including the species under their common names, noisy scrubbird and rufous scrubbird, currently follow the IOC's "Scrubbirds". I don't know if this is found in the IOU's original publication, or if that is what the IOC World Bird List follows, but they give many references to their mission: hyphen-omission, eg. hyphens, On Hyphens and Phylogeny et al. There is, however, an exception

• NOTE: The only exception to the above cases is to use a hyphen if otherwise the name would be hard to pronounce or would look odd (e.g., White-eye, Wattle-eye, Thick-knee, Huet-huet, Chuck-wills-widow). Whip-poor-will was deemed borderline and the committee decided to follow perceived general usage. — IOC World Bird List v 8.2 by Frank Gill & David Donsker (Eds), compound names

I can find no other source that omits a hyphen or space in the name, giving instead "Scrub-bird" or "Scrub bird", and this bibliography also suggests the general preference is to hyphenate. cygnis insignis 16:27, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Clements hyphenates (Cornell hyphenates a lot of names that IOC doesn't) but IOC names remain the Wikipedia standard for individual bird pages. Craigthebirder (talk) 19:17, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for introducing me to the Clements list, there are helpful notes and discussion that cleared up some other questions. Before raising my concern I checked the current naming conventions from the Project page, it notes "Wikipedia article titles may diverge from the IOC list when the most common name in reliable sources is different from the IOC name" (linking relevant guidance). I infer from that statement there are exceptions and propose this is a candidate on that basis.

BTW, I did find one publication, a local photographic field guide, that notes it follows the IOC (IOU) published listings and uses their orthography. I appreciate the simplicity the IOC interim list provides in titles and content for this project's articles, but not without some scepticism and the overwhelming consensus of reliable sources. — cygnis insignis 08:51, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Featured article stuff

The tree swallow and northern gannet are at FAC (although the latter seems to be almost done). Also, I think it would be nice to do a collab to get the swallow article up to a featured article. Thoughts on that? RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 20:15, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

• I've done a lot of the work on swallow, but it really needs its taxonomy and systematics section filling out. Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:51, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

• RileyBugz, in fact the gannet has had only two content reviews and can't be promoted on just that. Sabine's Sunbird, that's looking a lot better than I remember it. I have access to HBWalive, lots on taxonomy. Do you want me to email you that (and any other sections you fancy)? I also have Turner, which is used only once here with no page number, but should have a lot of overview. There may be something general we could add regarding predation and parasitism, don't know. I'm happy to do what can on the swallow Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:08, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

• As for taxonomy, I've added a bit about relations between clades in Hirundininae, and the evolution of nest construction. Also, I know that there has been a fair amount of research done on the immune systems of some members of the family (like [3] and [4]), so that may be interesting to add. RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 19:46, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

I have HBW alive too, but the systematics section hasn't been updated recently so is probably a touch dated. I'll have a look around on the weekend. I'm actually pretty close to getting pitta to GAN, but I need to upate it with some newer papers. Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:57, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Superb bird-of-paradise

The ioc has split the superb bird-of-paradise, and are calling each of the species Greater Lophorina, Crescent-caped Lophorina, and Lesser Lophorina. Prevailing literature are calling them Greater superb bird-of-paradise, Vogelkop superb bird-of-paradise, and Lesser superb bird-of-paradise, respectively. The Project uses the IOC for English names, but Im not sure what to do in this case. Ill go with consensus.....Pvmoutside (talk) 20:25, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

The IOC names do have the benefit of being less wordu. Lesser superb bird-of-paradise is a mouthful.... Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:37, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

It seems that we should use the non-IOC names for now, at least until we get scientific papers or other taxonomic sources adopting the IOC names. Otherwise, we are placing consistency above recognizability. RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 20:53, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

That's not a great rationale - we should stick to IOC unless they're a really good reason not to. Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:51, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

given the lack of interest/input, I'll use the IOC names, and link all names to pages…..Pvmoutside (talk) 14:19, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment on recommending usage of automatic taxoboxes

There is an RfC regarding recommending usage of automatic taxoboxes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Request for comments: Should the automatic taxobox system be the current recommended practice?. Inviting anybody who watches this page to contribute their thoughts to that thread.

WikiProject Birds is currently using automatic taxoboxes in 68.2% of project tagged articles that have any form of taxobox. Plantdrew (talk) 01:35, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

common name navigation

I notice there are two pages attempting to link articles via the name "bronzewing": one is minimal form of SIA, Bronzewing, another contains discussion of a 'group', "Bronzewing pigeon". The solution is probably something in between, but that requires some work with page history, merging, and correcting text on the incoming links. The second page was created in 2003, and has since been chopped, patched, and tagged for the single reference given to support the page's quirky concept of a group.

I note all this here in case further discussion is needed, and for the interest of project members working on the arrangement of bird articles. And also to ask, Is there a way to tag dabs and similar bird pages for improvement in the future? And while I'm here, quibbling about this and that, I'll add that this project's articles have been very useful to me over the years and the efforts of all here deserves praise :) cygnis insignis 08:49, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Bird Vocalization needs to vocalize

I have a problem with the bird vocalization article. The two choices a blackbird and the australian raven are weak choices. One has been over dubbed to isolate and the sound quality suffers as a result. The other is too quick leaving no real appreciation for the animal's call. There are no really good examples of mimicry which happens to be a trait in birds not found in too many other animals in the natural world. Shouldn't that be better represented? Finally and most importantly the Eastern Pewee is a perfect accessible bird song. The length of the recording is good and the animal has a song phrase that is easily accessible to any listener encountering bird song for the first time (an ascending and descending set of phrases grounded by the opening note). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davros69999 (talk • contribs) 14:25, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Birds of North America for the killdeer

Hello! Does anybody have a subscription to Birds of North America? The killdeer description section is a tidge messy, and I'd like to confirm everything in there, and so the appearance section that BNA has should be good enough to do that. Thanks! RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 20:45, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Nevermind; I actually found a source that worked for me. RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 21:55, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Scientific name changes

First-time talker here - very sorry if I am in the wrong project for this request? The Fifty-ninth Supplement to the American Ornithological Society's Check-list of North American Birds notes that Arizona Woodpecker (formerly L. arizonae) should now be assigned to the genus Dryobates. I suspect there are many such scientific and common name changes needed to the wiki articles whenever a new July issue of the Auk comes out. Is there a central repository of such change requests I need to visit before suggesting an edit? CarlHaynie (talk) 21:22, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi CarlHaynie — you're in the right place! We use the International Ornithological Congress as our source of taxonomy and bird names (common and scientific), and they're still using Leuconotopicus for Arizona Woodpecker. However, you can certainly add the new scientific name to the article and indicate that the name is being used by the AOU. It's also useful (if you're doing that) to indicate why they're moving it from the older genus. Let us know if you have any questions! MeegsC (talk) 21:46, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

References

Looking outside the anglophone world

It is now possible to generate automatically updated lists of articles that are on other language Wikipedias but missing on English using Wikidata - an example can be found here where biographies included in other language Wikipedias (or Wikispecies where all taxon authors are included). Shyamal (talk) 03:53, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Weirdness around jacana

I've just noticed that back in January there was a weird something that happened to Jacana. The page was probably moved with cut and paste and then an admin deleted and placed a dab page in its place. This means that a decade of edits have been lost and someone has thrown up a stub at Jacanidae. Fellow bird admins - thoughts on the best way to untangle this mess technically? More generally, maybe run a rfc about whether jacana the bird is the primary subject? Sabine's Sunbird talk 21:23, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Could easily undelete and merge the history - but pinging the deleting admin in this case @JHunterJ:. I agree with the bird being the primary topic. Shyamal (talk) 02:10, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

I have done the history merge for Jacana but have not swapped the current disambiguation page at Jacana with Jacanidae. Shyamal (talk) 09:38, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll look into fixing the rest of it soon. Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:37, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Peacock tail listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Peacock tail. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. HighFlyingFish (talk) 01:33, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Mascarenotus sunk into Otus

In this[5] DNA paper. Should we follow and merge? FunkMonk (talk) 02:06, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Not until IOC does so - it's the taxonomy used for bird articles (species, genera, etc., though not usually for "List of birds of..." articles). But a sentence could be added to the Mascarenotus article, "Recent evidence indicates that..." with the full citation. Craigthebirder (talk) 01:54, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Do they cover higher level taxa too? FunkMonk (talk) 01:56, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Only up to family. Loopy30 (talk) 02:56, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Identifying species based on very little information

In ~1830, Gabriele de Sanctis produced an ornamental alphabet where each letter was illustrated with a lavishly detailed bird. Names were provided... but the labels are in extremely ornate calligraphy, and the spelling is a little arbitrary (and in Italian).

And just to make things harder, he didn't stick as closely to the notion of 'a letter is represented by a bird whose name begins with that letter' as he should have - for instance, 'X' is the Airone Bianco.

I found reasonably-high-quality scans of three pages of three letters each and uploaded them to Commons - file:Avian Alphabet by Gabriele de Sanctis - ABC.jpg, file:Avian Alphabet by Gabriele de Sanctis - NOP.jpg, and file:Avian Alphabet by Gabriele de Sanctis - XYZ.jpg - with conclusive ID's of 6 of the birds, a pretty close guess for a 7th, and no idea for the the other two. The images look (to my inexpert eye) pretty well done; can anyone have a go at identifying them? DS (talk) 15:18, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Ziollo is apparently a nuthatch based on Italian word search but the illustration is somewhat inaccurate. A nice find though. Shyamal (talk) 15:28, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Is the first one perhaps a king vulture? FunkMonk (talk) 16:06, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

"Rei degli avolroj" could well be the "avvoltoio reale", yes. Thank you, I'll add that to the caption. DS (talk) 16:19, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Also, oops, "bozzardo" is not as conclusively 'buzzard' as I thought. Any better guesses? (and, to be honest, a closer ID on 'Ottarda' and 'Pellicano' would be useful too) DS (talk) 16:29, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Cool, would probably also be good to add categories and spell out the English names in parenthesis or such. As for pelican and buzzard, I think it would be impossible to identify to exact species for those. They seem pretty generic. FunkMonk (talk) 18:19, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

'Ottarda' is a bustard all right, most likely the Great bustard it:Otis tarda as the most famous of the family and because of the similarity between the Italian and binomial names. It used to be shot for the pot.

The English article lacks an anecdote which I heard many years ago, and for which I have no source. A foreign visitor to an English country house was an appalling shot. To get him away from the rest of the party for a day, his host confided in him that a Great bustard had been seen nearby, and would he like to hunt it on his own? In the evening, the visitor thanked his host profusely for the gift. The year was 1832... Narky Blert (talk) 12:01, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

According to this source, "the bozzardo lives in bushes, hedges and rushes. There are two species, one loves poultry [presumably small birds rather than chickens], the other fish". On the other hand, this source (p. 566) distinguishes bozzardo from Falco calzata (= Buteo vulgaris, presumably Buteo buteo from the specific epithet vulgaris, 'common') but says that both are valuable to man as predators on mice. Your guess is as good as mine. Narky Blert (talk) 12:34, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

The first thing I noticed was the last image has five or six birds perching amongst the calligraphic foliage. The two cheerful looking snakes are reminiscent of the serpents of a Caduceus. — cygnis insignis 16:28, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Buffon refers to the "yacou" as a "turkey from Cayenne" [6] - does that accord with the guan identification? The guans are Spix 1825, so I suppose it would work chronologically... --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:45, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Eh - I'm not confident enough to add other labels and categories myself, but I won't revert you if you do it. DS (talk) 00:39, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Yacou may be the Crested guan. An English translation of Buffon equates it to Penelope cristata (link), which is a synonym of P. purpurascens (link). Buffon had been translated into Italian, and that version too calls the bird 'yacou' (link).

I liked the comment about its edibility, not something you see in many field guides nowadays. Narky Blert (talk) 11:44, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

A link to a DAB page

Ornithology includes a link to point count, which is a redirect to a DAB page. All the entries on the DAB page are hopelessly irrelevant. IMO a good solution might be a brief inline explanation of the term in the article. Does anyone feel up to the task? Narky Blert (talk) 11:15, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

There is some content at Avian ecology field methods too. Shyamal (talk) 12:00, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

@Shyamal: TYVMI, perfect! I resolved the dab-needed tag using your link, and also added it to the DAB page. Narky Blert (talk) 12:40, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Joining

I am not able to add my name to the list. How is it done? Qwerty number1 (talk) 07:10, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Go here, add your name in alphabetical order, scroll to the bottom, click "Publish changes". Mathglot (talk) 07:17, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! Qwerty number1 (talk) 15:37, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Bin Chicken, 'Low Importance'?!

How can the Sydney Bin Chicken, a national cultural icon and connoisseur of bin juice, be ranked as "Low Importance"? I would encourage ornithologists to please update themselves with this 'Planet Earth' episode. Bin Chicken SC would not be at all impressed and I fear that you may end up with a legal fight on your hands, if his eminent status is not duly noted. 14.200.91.233 (talk) 01:03, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Never mind, I have just found Requesting an assessment page. 14.200.91.233 (talk) 01:08, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

It may be more important for Wikiproject Australia (feel free to heighten its importance there). But among birds overall, probably not so much. The sacred ibis of the same genus is probably more historically famous worldwide, but it is also rated as low. FunkMonk (talk) 01:12, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

The Bin Chicken is rated as the second most popular bird in Australia, a continent of 7,686,884 square km and the 6th largest nation on Earth. There's only 7 continents, which means it's *at least* the 14th most important bird. There are multiple online videos about it with *millions* of views each. Can you show me any such videos about Thoth or the 'Sacred Ibis', with that kind of popularity? Note Bin Chickens were commonly called the Sacred Ibis here too, until differentiated (from 1970s-1990s), so you may be misattributing some of the BC's fame there. Thoth also struggles for relevance, unlike the Bin Chicken, which is also a very important bird to Indigenous Australians - the oldest continuous culture in the world, over 60,000 years and still strong. Thoth and the Egyptian Empire was a flash in the pan. 14.200.91.233 (talk) 13:58, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Even the peacock, arguably one of the most famous birds in the world (and gets many times the page views of the Australian ibis per day), is "only" listed as mid importance. FunkMonk (talk) 14:17, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Article assessment is a crapshoot, but generally speaking for a project like this, articles on individual species of bird are pretty much always going to be low importance because, clearly, there are just so many of them. It's not an assessment of the bird's real-world significance. More "important" articles are broader topics, usually. There are currently 38 "top importance" articles (e.g. bird, evolution of birds, bird anatomy), while there are over 15,000 "low importance" articles including very well known birds like barn swallow and American crow and blue jay. But it's also broadly inconsistent: bald eagle is rated "high importance", common starling is rated "mid-importance", and I'm sure there are many other confusing examples.

Being a cultural icon of Australia would likely signify a higher importance assessment for WikiProject Australia (although for example the Canada jay is still rated "low-importance" for WikiProject Canada) but not necessarily for this project. Also, please don't make legal threats on Wikipedia. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:30, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

I think the "threat" was a joke, in reference to this:[7] Almost makes me wish I was Australian, so I could get all their weird animal references, hehe... In any case, if someone wants to do justice to the bird, expand the article! Few people really care about importance ratings, the readers don't see it anyway. What really matters is if anyone works to improve the article, and that is rarely done in accordance with such raitngs. FunkMonk (talk) 14:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Fair. Thanks for your helpful replies and good luck to you FunkMonk. Forgot my own rule that I've given up working on Wikipedia anyway though. It used to be easy and helpful to productively generate high quality, well referenced and accurate content. Now days it's just a waste of time and effort to continuous fight edit cabals over endless minutiae, bike shedding, ego stroking and power trips. All the best and thanks for constructive dialogue with you personally though. 14.200.91.233 (talk) 16:28, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

I think you will find that when you move away from controversial subjects, and edit for example bird or dinosauer articles, there is very little of the drama inherent in other subjects. If your additions are sound, you will very often find yourself the ony editor of an article for months at a time. FunkMonk (talk) 02:23, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

American Bald Eagle, "High Importance"?! Quoting here: "One of the smallest eagles in the world, only eats little fish, basically a glorified seagull", versus the mighty Australian Wedge-tail Eagle: "One of the largest eagles in the world, hunts large mammals including kangaroos, can see in infrared and ultraviolet, only eagle in the world that attacks parachutes and paragliders". Ever caught the glint of a Wedge-tail's eye, circling above and peering into your soul? Truly a king among pidgeons. FunkMunk is correct that I don't think Bin Chicken SC is actually too likely to take legal action. Although judging by his profile picture here, who could really know WHAT he is plotting?! Thank you kindly for the background and informative explanations though IvanVector. Regarding the peafowl (aka peacock), I fully endorse not ever letting him rise above "mid importance", just on the basis that he's such an obvious attention seeker. The peafowl quite deserves to be taken down a notch or two. Just a bit too much of an arrogant twerp show-off. 14.200.91.233 (talk) 15:00, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Birds of prey in flight

• 
• 

I need help in identifying the two birds of prey in flight above. I took the pictures in the Volerie des aigles. --AmBu (talk) 00:26, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Featured quality source review RFC

Editors in this WikiProject may be interested in the featured quality source review RFC that has been ongoing. It would change the featured article candidate process (FAC) so that source reviews would need to occur prior to any other reviews for FAC. Your comments are appreciated. --IznoRepeat (talk) 21:37, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Tasmanian nativehen name change discussion - again

See Talk:Tasmanian nativehen. Maias (talk) 00:10, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Clark's grebe

Hi there. I've almost completely rewritten the article on this bird. The original text was almost all cited to the 'Birds of North America' website (info from the 1992 book), which is inaccessible behind a paywall for me. Much of this original text appeared logically wrong to me, and as I have researched further I have noted much disputable information. Up till now I've attributed that to the authors of the original 'Birds of North America' (BNA) reference, but I am suspecting that the text was mostly made up by the editor who added it in 2017 and unjustly referenced to BNA at the time. I don't want to put stuff in the mouth of the authors of BNA when they didn't state it.

Could someone with access to this site confirm my suspicions? Here are discrepancies I've noted:

• Description: The size -the text stated that this grebe is smaller than the western grebe. This is not in the measurements given in prior studies. Does the BNA really state this? It appears that if this was measured it is likely a sampling artefact caused by Bergmann's rule or an incorrect understanding of the taxonomy of the species concept proposal by an earlier author, but most likely due to a wikipedia editor's incorrect reading of the size ranges given in BNA (an outlier specimen causing a slight difference doesn't mean anything). I think this is important from a taxonomic perspective given the odd consistency of Bergmann's rule across both taxa across the range (indicating steady gene exchange). -don't worry I won't write any of this, just want to know who exactly says one taxon is smaller?
• Description: the thing about the bill being upturned in this taxon. It is nowhere in the prior literature... Did a wikipedia editor conclude this based on photos or is it really in the BNA?
• Description: juvenile plumage, is this truly stated? I read something different elsewhere.
• Taxonomy: BNA apparently only includes the USA & Canada despite the aggrandising title they use, how do they treat the Mexican taxa and Dickerman's original species concept regarding this taxon? Do they continue supporting the 1858 holotype chosen in the 1960s?
• Taxonomy: Synonymy? Not stated in the article. If I knew the taxa BNA regards as synonyms that would tell me a lot about how they deal with the different species concepts published.
• Taxonomy: Subspecies: This is a mess, the subspecies put here & at western grebe should be switched around depending on the taxonomic interpretation/species concept used. Does the BNA really give these subspecies for this taxon?
• Taxonomy: The original wikipedia text made mention of a genetics study in the 1980s proving the taxonomic distinctness of this taxa and attributed this to the BNA -this looks like nonsense to me (technically highly unlikely in the 1980s, not mentioned by the same authors of the BNA in earlier and subsequent works, and I can't find anything about such a study) so I just got rid of it. Any references cited in the BNA for this?
• Habitat and distribution: According to the wikipedia text the BNA states that this bird winters in Central America, Mexico and California. The maps rendered fide NatureServe have a different distribution, and out of the 100,000 georeferenced observations and specimens logged at the GBIF there are zero birds found below Veracruz abouts. Central America thus seems wrong to me, but it might be a semantics thing or a transcription mistake... is it?

Thank you. Leo 86.83.56.115 (talk) 23:08, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Leo, I have a subscription to HBW Alive and I also have Olgilvie's Grebes of the World If you would like the text of either or both, email me and I'll send them to you. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:13, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

bird caller?

I reading about the responses to an imitated whistle and to an Audubon bird caller, the author (in HANZAB) thought to specify the type (trademarked I think), and I thought a link would be helpful. There is another term related to this, when people suck their teeth to provoke a response, and I wonder if this sort of interaction is already mentioned somewhere. I didn't see anything in bird vocalisation, if that is place for discussion. cygnis insignis 12:07, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Maybe at Pish? Loopy30 (talk) 12:52, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Artificial bird call devices - or luring devices could be introduced somewhere in bird vocalisation along with playback - (I vaguely remember adding something about the oldest lure for crakes being a mention of a notched rib) - and other related terms turn up in other contexts as in visual and auditory forms of luring - Bird_trapping#Luring and - there is also Lure_(falconry) - there is also something to be said about bird call imitation (by humans) - which is partly covered at Impressionist_(entertainment)#Bird_impressionists. Shyamal (talk) 16:47, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

That is it, pishing, knew I had seen that somewhere. The term squeaking is also used in AU, but I think there is one more. I will link pish and assume that the related content will eventually be collated or disambiguated to gather in that term. If someone works across this luring and trapping business, and mention of the commercial product as a standard needs a secondary source, I guess HANZAB does that. I remember that anthropological examination, something made it more convincing than I first assumed (such as it was documented in people doing the same thing). Thanks for the responses. cygnis insignis 17:58, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Capitalization of names of standardized breeds

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC on capitalization of the names of standardized breeds.

This is a neutral RfC on a question left unanswered by MOS:LIFE (on purpose in 2012–2014, pending "later discussion"). It is now later, and lack of resolution of the question has held up MOS:ORGANISMS in draft proposal state for 6 years.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:03, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Today's featured photo & HBW

I noticed that today's featured photo (File:Pied-winged swallow (Hirundo leucosoma).jpg) is the lovely Pied-winged swallow which is in this project's purview. I saw that there was almost no info on the page and so went about sprucing it up a bit. But I couldn't find any good references except for this HBW page. However I don't have an HBW subscription and was wondering if a project member did and would be willing to help/collaborate with me on giving this bird the coverage it deserves! Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!} 09:55, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Captain Eek, I have HBW, email me and I'll send you the text. I also have Angela Turner's Swallows & Martins: An Identification Guide and Handbook which I'll also send if it has anything more than HBW Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:05, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

I've sent the HBW alive text. - Aa77zz (talk) 10:19, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

User damaging content

The article Osprey, Pandion haliaetus, formerly included a subspecies Pandion haliaetus cristatus, that the IOC (apparently, haven't checked) have recognised as a species Pandion cristatus and that a user has created under eastern osprey. Evidently, this was a copy paste from the P. haliaetus, and when I noted that proper attribution I thanked the user for an uncharacteristic job well done in that regard.

However, that is all they did! much of the content is about the cosmopolitan species and is little more than a great kludge of precise bullshit—fully referenced from unrelated sources— that was carelessly dumped into this article. There has been some activity since, or I would be inclined to restore the redirect, as it is I propose to blank the fabricated content and replace it with some properly sourced information. Secondly, I propose that the activities of this editor be censored, and I ask that members of this project seek to endorse that and stop actual damage being done to articles within its scope in the most time effective and drama free way possible. If someone here knows the user, or has communicated successfully with them, now is the time to tell to stop screwing up content and see about fixing the mess. @Pvmoutside:, pinging that account, although fairly warned this was coming. cygnis insignis 17:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I've been doing a crash course in raptors to try and fix this article, but any assistance would be appreciated.

I'll also note that silence here was taken as endorsement, the user's response was start reverting me without explanation. cygnis insignis 03:12, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I had raised this issue arising from forking of phylogenetic splits into separate pages in the past see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Birds/Archive_70#Handling_of_splitting. I am personally against the way it is being handled currently but there was not much discussion in the past - My own feeling is that phylo species A and phylo species B be redirects to a consolidated article on species A+B with some introduction to the splits. The reason for unified handling being that splits are too difficult to maintain or grow until there is a significant body of new information and because all the older reference material cannot be reliably assigned to the new phylogenetic species (although sometimes, it may be geographically well-defined but more often than not, even this is not feasible). PS: Just to clarify what I mean by phylo-splits - they are species decided on the basis of molecular sequence sampling (and sometimes the samples are really too small, only based on museum specimens - and it is known that there can be problems due to horizontal gene transfer etc.) that indicate a long history of being separated from each other - which is taken as a way of showing that two lineages are non-interbreeding either because of disjunct ranges (more usual) or behavioural mechanisms (often with overlapping ranges). Shyamal (talk) 05:05, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Shyamal, thank you for the response. I'm on the fence with splitting, but often see notable content overlooked or ignored; tacking it on to bullet points becomes unwieldy. Cultural factors have historically had more influence over taxonomic status than grounded observation, this effect is well known in Australian and especially Western Australian ornithology. I see the advantage in a more conservative approach, maintaining a status quo over a crude and silent rearrangement of the taxonomy following one authority [IOU breakaway IOC]. There would be some overlap in these articles, the behaviour and description is what saw them lumped I assume, but authors have long regarded this as a separate taxon at least; consequently there is documentation that specifically applies to habitat, range, finer distinctions in plumage, associated species (they squabble with an resemble the local sea eagle), the prey and any number of things I am finding. The treatment as a species is well established and that status would not have been suppressed if it occurred as a non-migratory and conspicuous population in the Occident and that Australian birds were so lacking in broad studies and revisions. Note that the common name now modifies the 'eastern[?]' species, the bird familiar to those outside my region is still simply 'osprey'. Digressive, I know, but I'm fairly confident that content is being improved on the genus Pandion as a consequence of my indignant fixes and solutions. So I agree in part, then my jaw dropped when I saw a mention of HGT on this page, although I think I know what you are referring to. cygnis insignis 06:34, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I forgot, I think PVM's solution was to have articles for species A+B, A, as well as for B - and I am actually ok with two articles for A and B each with a disambig / set index but I think even that is not followed for some like the cattle egret, western cattle egret, and eastern cattle egret. Shyamal (talk) 09:12, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

FYI

At Talk:Southern boobook there is a daily page view chart, but it doesn't seem to render right when I look at it. I have fiddled with my machine on this end and I am fairly certain its not my computer, could someone here look into it? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:10, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

TomStar81, it had lost a closing }} Jimfbleak - talk to me? 08:19, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

List of birds of the world

Our page List of birds of the world is presently 560,973 bytes long, making it difficult to edit. According to Special:LongPages it's the 22nd longest article in Wikipedia. I think it needs to be subdivided, but I'm a copy editor not a taxonomist and I don't know how. There's been some discussion at Talk:List of birds of the world#Size, but I haven't been able to take it forward. If anyone could offer suggestions there or here, I'd be thankful.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  06:18, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The earlier suggestion in the article's talk page to break it up based on HBW might work, but updates would still be a problem because HBW isn't free like the IOC and Clements lists. Plus it doesn't make much sense to me to have the list be from HBW and the taxonomy from another source as is the current article. Craigthebirder (talk) 16:37, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I've suggested AFDing it. I fail to see what it adds. Sabine's Sunbird talk 22:30, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

• And now it's up for AfD. Sabine's Sunbird talk 10:36, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Misidentification of a photo

The bird featured for Alcippe brunneicauda is an incorrect identification. The e-mail for the user is no longer valid. Anyone interested in correcting it ....the bird linked is actually an adult Malacocincla abbotti williamsoni (Abbott's Babbler).Steve Pryor (talk) 14:27, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Have corrected the metadata for File:Alcippe brunneicauda - Khao Yai.jpg, the filename can be changed on request - pinging the photographer [[JJ Harrison as the file is widely (mis)used. Shyamal (talk) 14:42, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

For anyone unfamiliar with the rename process, just did one a couple of days ago, [8] The bot will place a notice and someone will fix it sooner or later. cygnis insignis 14:50, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

In the mood for a holiday review?

Pitta is at GAN. Figured I'd try and get it to FAC while I was on a christmas break. Sabine's Sunbird talk 22:28, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

• Pitta passed and will soon be at FAC, Toucan barbet is now at GAN. Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:16, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

I'll take a look if no one else takes it soon. There have been awfully few birds at FAC lately, but I have finally gone to work on Echo parakeet, so it should be there in not too long (taxonomy and conservation still need serious expansion). FunkMonk (talk) 10:08, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

• Once I have pitta in FAC I'm going to take another look at swallow - it's in pretty good nick but there are certainly some entertaining papers to add still. Sabine's Sunbird talk 10:34, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

• Pitta is at FAC, as is Australasian gannet. Thanks for the review of Toucan barbet which has now passed GAN. Sabine's Sunbird talk 21:22, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Pitta family authority

Aa77zz has raised an excellent point about the family authority for the Pitta's on that page's talk page, namely that there is some question as to whether the generally accepted authority is correct. What to do about it is unclear, however, without treading too deeply into OR, so given that the article in question is at FAC if you have time to have a look and chip in with suggestions that would be great. Sabine's Sunbird talk 06:06, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Identifying bird in Northern California

Hi experts, I'd like your assistance in identifying this bird in the Palo Alto Baylands: File:Unknown bird Palo Alto May 2011.jpg. I don't even know the broad category; is it a juvenile gull, or something else entirely? Most of the birds I photographed that day were California gulls, but comparing photos it doesn't match any gull I can find. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Shape-wise I'd say Western Gull but seemingly with aberrant plumage. Sabine's Sunbird talk 06:55, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Looks like the best bet at this point; seems to match Western gull a little more closely than California gull especially on the entirely black beak (though apparently both do have pink legs as juveniles). Thanks! -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:26, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Rfc on new classification scheme

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Request for comment: new classification scheme for eukaryotes, which asks for comments on how we should deal with a proposed new classification system that has widespread ramifications across the tree of life. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:47, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Bird terminology across projects

Hello birdy project! Can some kind person please have a look at Talk:Guillemot where Naamloze gebruiker is asking about the interwiki links? If you go there you'll see the whole story but what I think it boils down to is the slight naming mess around guillemots and murres. Being horribly ignorant in this whole area I am not even dipping a toe in the water in case I damage something but someone with more knowledge might be able to better advise. Thanks and best wishes to all DBaK (talk) 08:28, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Francis Willughby

I normally write FAs about birds or nature reserves, but I live fairly close to Willughby's ancestral home, and I was given The Wonderful Mr Willughby: The First True Ornithologist for Christmas, so I thought I'd have a shot at a biography. Shyamal has been extremely helpful in getting me access to a number of my sources, so to some extent it's been a matter of what to leave out, given that I'm condensing hundreds of pages of material.

I won't submit to FAC until the beginning of March, since I've a trip to Seville and Cadiz planned later this month, so I'd welcome any comments on this biography in the interim. Thanks also to Aa77zz for steering me towards a more rational referencing style than I had originally used Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:33, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Sounds good. Post here when you nominate it and I might join the review process! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:01, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion about extinct non-aves bird taxobox systematics

Just bringing a mention of a discussion about the taxobox systematics used by basal "birds" outside crown group Aves, which may have implications on the taxobox display of pages that fall within this project. Feel free to leave comments, questions, concerns. Follow the link here. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 00:25, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Fixing inconsistent ranks in taxonomy templates

Input sought At Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system/Archive 1#Fixing inconsistent ranks in taxonomy templates I've suggested some alternative ways of fixing inconsistent ranks in taxonomy templates. They could make it easier to deal with the problem of inconsistent classification systems, e.g. the ones used for birds and dinosaurs, or the ones used for mammals and dinosaurs. Be warned that it's a long post, but it very much needs input, particularly from "old hands" at using the automated taxobox system. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:47, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Changes to taxonomy templates

Discussions elsewhere led to ErikHaugen changing Template:Taxonomy/Avialae so that it no longer skips the "dinosaur" clades and ranks.

This caused some taxonomy templates and taxoboxes to have inconsistent ranks. I've fixed these: quite a few of the taxonomy templates were unused, so I removed them; for those that were used, I replaced the offending rank by "clade".

The change to Template:Taxonomy/Avialae does mean that articles about extinct birds, such as Gansus, will now show the "dinosaur taxonomy" rather than the classical "bird taxonomy". Peter coxhead (talk) 09:00, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Confused taxonomy

See Talk:Strisores#Confused taxonomy. It would be good if someone knowledgeable could sort this. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:32, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Why is the house wren the type species of Troglodytes?

Both Peters and H&M4 Vol 2 p.557 give the type species of the genus Troglodytes as the house wren (Troglodytes aedon). The genus was erected by Vieillot in 1809 but the type was subsequently designated by Baird in Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean here.

I expected the type species to be the Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes). The wiki article on tautonyms states "For animals, a tautonym implicitly indicates that the species is the type of its genus". The article cites ICZN. Chapter 15 Art. 68a. There isn't a 68a but 68.4 reads:

"68.4. Type species by absolute tautonymy. If a valid species-group name, or its cited synonym, originally included [Art. 67.2] in a nominal genus-group taxon is identical with the name of that taxon, the nominal species denoted by that specific name (if available) is the type species (type species by absolute tautonymy)."

This appears to support the tautonym article. What am I missing here? Why isn't the Eurasian wren the type? - Aa77zz (talk) 16:37, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

The genus was created in Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de l'Amérique Septentrionale : contenant un grand nombre d'espèces décrites ou figurées pour la première fois, so I'd guess that the American species was the one he created the new genus for initially Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:09, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

<ec>Perhaps because Troglodytes troglodytes was originally described in the genus Motacilla (as Motacilla Troglodytes). When Vieillot erected Troglodytes in 1809, if the Eurasian wren was not included (i.e. still classified in genus Motacilla), then the house wren could be designated as the type species for the "new" genus (Troglodytes). Loopy30 (talk) 17:22, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Dyanega: Shyamal (talk) 03:43, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing help!

Howdy hello folks! I am currently majorly expanding Cactus wren in my sandbox (I've already increased its prose size threefold). While I've certainly found some great sources, there are two great sources that are behind paywalls! I am cordially asking for assistance if anyone has access to HBW or The Cornell Bird Lab and would be willing to email me information. If folks have other good sources in general about the Cactus Wren, and would be willing to share, I need all the help I can get. Thanks all! Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!} 22:20, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• I've sent an email re: HBW to you. Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:10, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
• And I've sent an email re: Cornell Bird Lab article to you. 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 01:58, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

You folks have been super helpful! Thanks a ton. Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!} 02:07, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

• I had a look on Flickr for relevant free images not presently on Commons, here are some of the nest[9][10][11], possibly its eggs[12], and a bird with prey[13]. FunkMonk (talk) 02:56, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
• @CaptainEek: It would probably be good to include some journal sources; Google Scholar is really helpful with this. Furthermore, you can use this tool to cite any article that you have the DOI for. RileyBugz^{私に叫ぼう}_私の編集 03:15, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

A good idea, and thank you for those tools! Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!} 04:21, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

HBW buff on Masked booby

Righto folks, am in process of buffing Masked booby and have info from HANZAB, however the HANZAB treatment is really focused on Australia/NZ so could do with some balancing from elsewhere. All input appreciated Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:55, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

• Flicked it to you, you should try and get Cornell BNA coverage too. Are we going for the Sulidae Featured Topic? Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:26, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Dunno - tropicbirds would be easier. Depends on what I feel like doing next I guess...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:36, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

More eyes on Black-throated finch

Hi all, there is an ongoing issue at Black-throated finch. This bird is topical as the southern subspecies, is estimated to have disappeared from 80% of its range (scroll down) according to Australian Government. However, an IP has been disputing ( see here for their interpretation and then tagging here and here. Talk page discussion continues. Essentially they are dismissing evidence of decline as anecdotal and of poor quality, and hence nonexistent. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:22, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Sorry meant to add that its range overlaps with a huge and highly controversial huge coal mine proposed for the area. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:23, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

I think you can take that as read. cygnis insignis 11:03, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Paper about birds in Wikipedia

Hi friends! This recent paper on PLOS Biology talks about your great work about birds on WP. Congratulations for all. Ixocactus (talk) 17:04, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

That's a fascinating paper Ixocactus, thank you kindly for the head's up! Sabine's Sunbird talk 05:38, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Traffic for the en.wiki article on Sarus crane

This was something I had noticed last September about the Sarus crane article - the general trend seems to be that the species becomes more conspicuous during the breeding season and the spikes above the general trend are weekends. Shyamal (talk) 06:38, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

An interesting insight into something I'd never thought about Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:41, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Merge discussion

At Talk:Western_cattle_egret Shyamal (talk) 07:55, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Draft:List of birds of Tristan da Cunha

Could somebody please review Draft:List of birds of Tristan da Cunha. It needs a Subject-matter expert to evaluate the sources. For example, I can't tell if Avibase is considered a WP:RS or not. My first reaction from looking at the website was that it probably wasn't, but I see it listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/References, so maybe it's OK? Somebody who knows the area better than I do would be a better reviewer than me. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:43, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

A good start. Avibase has been used for a huge number of bird lists. It's not a primary source, but absent one it'll do. However, you didn't completely follow Clements. The storm-petrels were split into two families: Oceanitidae (Southern storm-petrels) and Hydrobatidae (Northern storm-petrels). The giant-petrels and diving-petrel are hyphenated. There are also many format issues: Only the first word in common names is capitalized (e.g. Yellow-billed cuckoo) except when more of the name is proper nouns (e.g. Juan Fernandez petrel). The rails, plovers, and sandpipers lists need format fixes. Franklin's gull needs a second ]. And you need to source the descriptive text - put "Attribution: The descriptions of family traits are derived from each family's article; see them and their references for original sources." in your edit summary. Craigthebirder (talk) 01:28, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

It should probably state in the lead that it covers the islands of the group, not just the main island. Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:18, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Avibase, hosted by Bird Studies Canada (the Canadian co-partner for BirdLife International), should indeed by recognised as a WP:RS. The database can be useful to be able to concurrently view how a particular taxon is classified by many different authorities, and how this classification is changing over time. From this, you can see not only the alternate classifications and which authorities currently adopt them, but also whether this is a lone view or whether authorities are gradually changing towards or away from a particular classification scheme. Loopy30 (talk) 00:10, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you everybody for your assistance. The draft has been accepted and is now at List of birds of Tristan da Cunha. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:21, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

None of the issues which I raised (non-Clements storm-petrels, formatting, and attribution) have been resolved. Craigthebirder (talk) 01:22, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, any reason the Inaccessible rail rates but the Inaccessible finch doesn't? Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:24, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

World Geographical Scheme for Recording Bird Distributions

As a pending issue, I wish to collect contributors' opinions regarding the eventual creation of a World Geographical Scheme for Recording Bird Distributions... which could be:

• +/- calqued on the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions
• while addressing the key difference : unlike plant species (which are categorized solely according to political divisions), bird species' ranges also tend to be linked to biogeographical units, hence the possible co-existence of both

--Couiros22 (talk) 17:28, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Actually, the WGSRPD uses a mixture of geographical and political divisions; certainly it's not solely according to political divisions. Thus Papuasia is a Level 2 region that cuts across political divisions, being related to the Wallace Line. One reason that some clear relationship to political units is important is conservation: conservation requires government action, so countries matter as well as biogeography.

All I can say re birds is that although in principle it should help to have a well defined and agreed system, in practice for plants it's proved essentially impossible to stop editors using national boundaries. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:24, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

The WGSRPD appears to have been created by a multi-national consortium. If that body thought one for birds was appropriate or useful, why didn't it create it? Do I understand that you're asking if we would use it should that body or another create it? Craigthebirder (talk) 21:26, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

My opinion it would be too difficult to create, and too hard to understand for the general user....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:43, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Mass creation of portals

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that there was a portal for Portal:Kinglets linked to kinglets. I was slightly bemused but moved on. Then I noticed this discussion on the mass creation of portals. It seems we have a lot of portals for bird families on our hands now, since randomly checking shows we have Portal:Parrots and Portal:Gulls. Not really sure what we do with that. The bird portal itself seems badly broken now too. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:31, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

• Someone has mass-nominated the bird portals (other than portal:birds) in the Miscellany for deletion if you fancy weighing in. Sabine's Sunbird talk 20:27, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Actually, more are up for deletion here. Sabine's Sunbird talk 16:45, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Bird portals deletion (or upmerging) discussions

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see:

• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Psittacinae (a mass-nomination that also includes: New World vultures, Old World vultures, frigatebirds, Peucaea, Petroicidae, Anchiornithidae, Callaeidae, Otididae, Sulidae, Threskiornithidae)
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Pipilo

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:53, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Also:

• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Woodpeckers (a mass-nomination that also includes birds-of-paradise, Gruidae, hummingbirds, parrots, penguins, sparrows, storks, toucans, trogons, tyrant flycatchers, and cranes).

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:14, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

HBW content

Can someone with access to HBW help with information on the Jacana family in general and the entries for Metopidius indicus and Hydrophasianus chirurgus - also any chance that someone has access to Fry, C.H. (1983). "The jacanid radius and microparra a neotenic genus". Gerfaut. 73 (2): 173–184. Shyamal (talk) 15:12, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I poked around looking for Fry without success, but it is cited in Emlen, Stephen T.; Sheldon, Frederick H.; Whittingham, Linda A. (1 January 2000). "Molecular Phylogeny of Jacanas and its Implications for Morphologic and Biogeographic Evolution". The Auk: Ornithological Advances. 117 (1): 22–32. doi:10.1642/0004-8038(2000)117[0022:MPOJAI]2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0004-8038. if that is useful. cygnis insignis 16:23, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that was where I got to know of it. Shyamal (talk) 16:56, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Le Gerfaut appears to be have been the house journal of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, ceased publication a good while ago and never was digitized. Various holdings of individual issues in libraries around the world, but one might be looking at physical interlibrary loan. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:35, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

"never was digitized." I might as well note what else I found, if only for the opportunity to contradict Elmidae :) BHL had them up to the US copyright boundary 1923, listing, and the US library (American Museum of Natural History Library) probably digitised them all and may be willing to supply an excerpt electronically. The same author de:Charles Hilary Fry contributed to the subject in The Birds of Africa. I read some things he wrote about bee and anteaters and thought he writes well, the paper above shows him to be insightful. cygnis insignis 21:31, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

@Shyamal, if you find that you cannot get the information from someone with a subscription access to HBW Alive, then perhaps I could help you out. HBW Vol.3 (hardcopy) is available at one of the university libraries in my city and I would be glad to scan and send you the relevant pages if need be. 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 23:42, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

• I'll send the accounts to Shyamal later today, but I don't have access to the paper. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:52, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks for the content @Sabine's Sunbird:. Shyamal (talk) 01:41, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Postscript - Thanks to User:Pajz on WP:RX - I now have the Gerfaut article. Shyamal (talk) 05:55, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Sand martin#Ecology

Quote: "The sand martin is sociable in its nesting habits; from a dozen to many hundred pairs will nest close together, according to available space. The nests are at the end of tunnels of from a few inches to three or four feet in length, bored in sand or gravel. The actual nest is a litter of straw and feathers in a chamber at the end of the burrow; it soon becomes a hotbed of parasites."

None of that is referenced. The last seven words seem odd and out of place. I'd welcome one of you to take a look.

This species of birds is currently making the news in the UK: [14] --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 21:34, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

@Dweller: the words you quote are identical here, and the website claims copyright. So it may be a WP:copyvio. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:39, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, that text has been in the article since its creation by Jimfbleak in March 2003, so it's more likely that the internet source copied it from Wikipedia. Perhaps Jim wishes to report a copyright infringement of his contribution as per the instructions here. Loopy30 (talk) 01:11, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

I have absolutely no recollection of this, must have been one of my earliest edits. I note that the Arran site is also from around that time, so it's not impossible that the text is copied from there before I had fully taken on board our procedures. Anyway, as I say, 16 years on, I simply don't remember Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:39, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

While the original Arran site may have been up in 2003, they did not add the Sand Martin material until some time after 29 July, 2009 (archive link). Loopy30 (talk) 13:42, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

At least it wasn't me! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:26, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

NatureServe maps and data

I emailed NatureServe, an organization that has compiled huge amounts of data about bird ranges and populations (as well as other animals and plants) about possibly using their maps on Wikipedia articles. Their maps are used on Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Neotropical Birds database, and in many other places. The NatureServe chief zoologist and senior conservation scientist responded and said that they would be happy to allow their data to be incorporated on here, but he wanted to talk to someone about organizing that. I think their maps and information are extremely valuable, and could provide range maps and population data for thousands of bird species. I am just a beginner editor, so I'm not the best representative for this Project: is there someone who would be able to speak for all of WikiProject Birds and work things out with NatureServe? If so you can email me and I can get you in contact with the organization. Audrey.m.horn (talk) 12:52, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi, one problem could be copyright, since Wikipedia only allows commercial CC licenses that can be used by anyone, not only Wikipedia. You can read more about how to obtain such permissions here:[15] FunkMonk (talk) 13:23, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

When talking with Dr. Young he said that we could use the maps as long as we gave credit, so I don't know if that means we need a new license... I don't really know much at all about this stuff. But is that considered a violation if we use them now? Audrey.m.horn (talk) 20:46, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

At the least, there needs to be some sort of email sent to the Commons people to confirm it. FunkMonk (talk) 21:05, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Asking for species name and genus

Hello, I'm not sure if this the correct place to ask this, but can someone here tell me what is the species and genus of these birds? File:Time to Feed.jpg, the only info is, this photo taken from Indonesia. Thank you.--AldNon^Ucallin?☎ 18:52, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Possibly a zitting cisticola, which is Cisticola juncidis though I could easily be wrong. Audrey.m.horn (talk) 20:56, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Photo of a parent bird feeding young described as zitting cisticola: https://www.flickr.com/photos/46202369@N02/8785738788 -Aa77zz (talk) 21:20, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks a lot to both of you, now I can proceed with this c:Commons:Quality_images_candidates/candidate_list#File:Zitting_cisticola_feeding_its_childs.jpg.--AldNon^Ucallin?☎ 07:33, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Gilleard Bros

For those of you in the United Kingdom, and active on Commons, I have just created c:Category:Gilleard Brothers. If you have pictures of hides (or other structures) made by Gilleards, please add them to that category.

I have also created a corresponding Wikidata item: Gilleard Bros Ltd (Q63196584); so if you edit on OpenStreetMap, you can tag hides etc. with manufacturer:wikidata=Q63196584. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:19, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Off topic

If any one has birded in the Montego Bay/Ochos Rios area of Jamaica and knows of a professional guide or has any other useful info, please email me Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:05, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Subscribe to new Tree of Life Newsletter!

"I've never heard so much about crinoids!"

Despite the many Wikipedians who edit content related to organisms/species, there hasn't been a Tree of Life Newsletter...until now! If you would like regular deliveries of said newsletter, please add your name to the subscribers list. Thanks, Enwebb (talk) 00:27, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

John Cotton's Notebook

I could use some help, please, identfying the species in c:Category:John Cotton's Notebook, all of which are from NSW, Australia. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:09, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Categorization

Quite a number of images needing identification and categorization here. Shyamal (talk) 04:43, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Featured list review/removal

Hello, there is a birds related featured list up for review here: Wikipedia:Featured list removal candidates/List of birds of Vieques/archive1. It is very, very outdated and I'm not sure it is worth the massive effort needed to bring it up to current standards, however if anyone is interested the link is provided. Mattximus (talk) 15:37, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Anyone have "Philippine Birds & Mammals" (1977)?

I already put a post at resource request, but thought I might try my luck here as well due to subject matter. Anyone have access to this text?

• Rabor, D. S. (1977). Philippine Birds & Mammals. UP Science Education Center. pp. 217–218. ISBN 9780824805357.

I'm looking for the pages on Acerodon jubatus starting at page 217, so probably just 217 and 218. Thanks, Enwebb (talk) 02:01, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

I just requested an interlibrary loan, so consider this resolved! Enwebb (talk) 14:29, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

https://archive.org/details/keytobatsofphili69ingl looks useful. Shyamal (talk) 16:32, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Shyamal, unfortunately Archive does not have the above text (which I'm interested in as it was referenced by another work), but thanks for the suggestion for that key! Enwebb (talk) 17:17, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Help for the creation of range maps and standardized tables for bird genera

Hi everyone,

I've recently started making tables for bird genera, as can be seen here: Accipiter. What do you think? Are there any improvements that you could see, before I apply this format to other pages? Perhaps I can include an arrow in the IUCN column for increasing/stable/decreasing populations? I've modeled it after the recently promoted List of parrots.

I do have one question. I would like to help make range maps. If you notice in Accipiter there are several different formats, but I would love to help standardize those so wikipedia resembles the high quality of a book encyclopedia. If anyone is willing to teach me how to make one, I'm happy to start the work. I have found the source information, which is easily available here [16] for example, I just don't know how to make the maps as nice as say:

Mattximus (talk) 14:42, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

How are Accipiter species ordered there? It's not the taxonomic order currently given by the IOU. Plantdrew (talk) 18:31, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Great question, I wondered this myself. I simply kept the order that was originally there and move them to a table. I'm happy change the order, however I wondered if there was some sort of logic to the original list so I was cautious and left it. Mattximus (talk) 22:24, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

New Zealand plover

The IOC currently recognises two subspecies of the New Zealand plover. It is proposed that the two recently created subspecies articles (Northern red-breasted plover and Southern red-breasted plover) be merged into the parent species article. If splitting is recognised at a later date, they can always be restored. Thoughts and comments? Loopy30 (talk) 11:26, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

I support following the IOC and for the treating both the Northern red-breasted plover and the Southern red-breasted plover as subspecies. We should merge the subspecies into the New Zealand plover article. We can mention that HBW alive has chosen to split the ssp. Aa77zz (talk) 16:04, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Support, and we should probably stick to merging subspecies into species articles (when there is not much to say about them independently anyway). FunkMonk (talk) 16:36, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Support merging based on established usage of IOC as the yardstick for bird taxonomy on enWP, and the fact that there doesn't seem to be so much to say about the individual subspecies that it couldn't be effectively combined in one article. Having said that, these at least aren't the 90% identical stubs that sometimes get thrown up when people try to split off a subspecies article, and if necessary could carry their own weight as sspp articles. But consistency in source for taxonomic status is preferable. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:55, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Obviously I disagreed, and the current state of the articles is the result of reverts that claim the IOC is the rule and frustrate attempts to expand each taxa. Who else recognises the IOC as the last word, except wikipedia? Most importantly, the IUCN recognises the taxa as two species. One species, or subspecies, is a critically endangered population of sixty birds, which was merely a brief note when I found the article and its muddied facts. I hesitate to fix or expand the articles because this situation was going to arise, as I see in page histories elsewhere, lump it all together and throw away that which is deemed irrelevant to the article. One of the rarest birds in the world and there is not much to say about them? cygnis insignis 16:44, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

so to provide some consistency, wikiproject birds use the IOC as its standard, but there have been cases where wikpedia has diverged from it. The common names of Australian Wood Duck and Maned Duck come to mind, as does Osprey, westetrn osprey, and eastern osprey. There is nothing wrong with stating there are alternative taxonomic strategies. I know IUCN references sometimes have different taxonomies than the reptile database or birdlife international for example. Other article pages mention a different classification in the body of the text where some systems classify as a species, others classify the same as a subspecies. Bottom line, it's nice to have for birds the IOC as a reference starting point, but it's not the end all by any means.....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:19, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Is Lesser Sundas goshawk considered a species?

This species Lesser Sundas goshawk is not listed by the IOC in any of the bird lists, however it is recognized by the IUCN. Which organization would you consider "definitive" if that is even possible? Mattximus (talk) 19:22, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Mattximus, there really is no "definitive" organization Wikipedia uses to define species (see comments above). Wikipedia does use the IOC as the best available guideline because it is regularly updated, where other taxonomic authorities usually take longer to update. If I were writing the article, I'd leave it a subspecies stating some authorities recognize species status for it...…Pvmoutside (talk) 20:39, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks I will take your advice. I'm new to editing bird pages, but I'm experimenting with different styles of tables. What do you think of the new version found here: Accipiter? Is it too much information? I would like to create a nice standardized table format for bird genera. This will give it a more encyclopedic look but also help for easy transferring of birds between genera should taxonomies change. Mattximus (talk) 21:55, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

the table looks fine! the information is complete....the only thing you may want to watch is if any of the taxonomies split, or any of tne species changes in population or distribution, then some of your criteria would need to be altered in a corresponding way. I usually make changes throughout if that happens, but with time constraints, i usually just delete information.that becomes innacurate….Pvmoutside (talk) 16:14, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Great! I'll apply this style to other genera. And I agree with you, in the event of a taxonomic move, no problem, the table is portable if they are all standardized, but in case of a split I will just delete the information. Thanks for looking it over! Mattximus (talk) 18:47, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Rook (bird)

Can I draw your attention to a question that I have posed on the Rook (bird) talk page about whether certain content should be included in the article. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:57, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Canada jay

With the release of IOC 9.2 here, could somebody with the necessarily privileges switch Grey jay with the Canada jay redirect. Many thanks Aa77zz (talk) 19:50, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

"Wisdom begins with putting the right name on a thing" (Old Chinese Proverb)^[CN] So Gray Jay is officially wrong, good, I win fifty bucks in a bet I made. They say they are following the NACC 2018, which is what? cygnis insignis 20:18, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Oh, the AOU says it is the North American Classification Committee. Interesting. cygnis insignis 20:22, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

The NACC proposal is here Aa77zz (talk) 20:51, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

The acceptance of the NACC proposal is on p.807 of the 59th Supplement here. Aa77zz (talk) 20:58, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, it is very interesting to compare the way regional bodies operate. cygnis insignis 21:58, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

The subspecies have new synonyms by inference, Idaho Canada jay etc. cygnis insignis 22:27, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

also, the IOC has Canada Jay up for the common name in its current draft which i believe becomes official in July.....i usually wait until changes are officially adopted, but i wouldn't fight anyone if they wanted to change it now, since the drafts usually all get adopted...Pvmoutside (talk) 00:38, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

oops. :looks like they made it official today...I'll jump on it....Pvmoutside (talk) 00:42, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Aa77zz (talk) 07:23, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

notice: Struthio dmanisensis move discussion needing input

There is a current move discussion happening at Struthio dmanisensis that needs help from taxonomy-literate editors--Kevmin § 15:59, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

List of birds of Japan

For anyone interested, I've decided to merge the non passerine and passerine Japan lists into the main list above. Japan doesn't have many more species than many other lists that have only one list. If I get no feedback, I'll probably do the same with the Indonesian list. It doesn't have many more species than South America, Asia, Brazil or India which only has one list. As far as I know, Japan and Indonesia are the only 2 states with more than one list.....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:07, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

SUPPORT Japan's list is smaller than that of the US and those of several South American and African countries, all of which have single articles. Craigthebirder (talk) 15:15, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

support yeah makes sense for consistency. Mattximus (talk) 19:50, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I've now also merged the List of birds of Indonesia. Over the next couple of weeks i'll change tbe formats of this and the Japan lists to follow Clements like many of the other countries do.....Pvmoutside (talk) 14:58, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Common_ostrich#Variety_of_English

Anyone interested in commenting on the spelling discussion here? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:47, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Level 4 vital articles

Anybody interested in these "vital article" levels might want to chime in (yay or nay) on a bird-related suggestion here. MeegsC (talk) 20:40, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Clements/ebird update

For anyone interested, the Clements/ebird update has been published on ebird, but has yet to follow on the Clements page at Cornell. Since the project uses IOC for taxonomy, it only affects regional bird pages (ie country lists, state lists, etc). I usually wait until the changes appear on the Clements page, but I thought people would like to know. Changes here: [17]....Pvmoutside (talk) 10:31, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Pretty quiet round here......

I have 2 GANs (Rock parrot and Western yellow robin) and there is a Peer Review open at Wikipedia:Peer review/Cactus wren/archive1....we are nearly at 200 FAs...which'd be nice. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:33, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

The Ara Project

Hi there. I completely rewrote the article above... because it annoyed me. But perhaps it would be best to rename it completely... Something along the line of: Macaw reintroductions in Costa Rica or "population" or some-such? Cheers. Leo Breman (talk) 16:10, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

HBW access

Hey everyone, I've been planning to work on some relatively obscure birds, which aren't covered so well by book sources. HBW access would be invaluable, but I'm disinclined to pay for it at the moment; is there anyone on this project with access who'd be willing to look up some species for me? Best, Vanamonde (Talk) 17:34, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak: has helped me in the past. Not sure if he is still subscribed though. Shyamal (talk) 16:53, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Vanamonde93, I still have access, so email me when you know what you want. I also have a number of family monographs which may be helpful depending on the species, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:23, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak: Many thanks; I will be certain to take you up on that. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:43, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Identify birds in line art

Some years back, the Pearson Scott Foresman company donated a ton of line art to Commons. These were items which had been in their illustrated dictionaries. However, they didn't label all the images - and in fact, they donated them in the form of assemblies of images, with filenames like "PSF-W1040007" that indicate only the first letter of the words illustrated by the images.

That's the context. Can anyone identify these birds whose names begin with W?

• 
  A W-bird
• 
  Another W-bird
• 
  I'm about 90% sure I correctly identified this one as a whimbrel, but would appreciate confirmation from someone who knows better.
• 
  I'm only about 60% sure I correctly identified this one as a whippoorwill. Again - confirm?

Thanks. DS (talk) 14:36, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

The second bird might be an Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes). -Aa77zz (talk) 15:57, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

First --wood pigeon?Leo Breman (talk) 16:12, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

I wonder if the first is a Band-tailed pigeon? Vanamonde (Talk) 16:45, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Unlikely - remember, 'w'. Could #2 be a wryneck ? DS (talk) 17:16, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Missed that. Similar markings, though. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:51, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Granted. But you're reasonably sure it's some sort of pigeon? If so, then 'wood pigeon' would be it. DS (talk) 15:29, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Oh, yes, it's a member of Columbidae. But when you say "wood pigeon", do you mean Common wood pigeon? There are other birds with "wood pigeon" in their names. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:42, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Under the circumstances, I think 'wood pigeon' is the best we can get. As for the others - #2, wren or wryneck? And confirmation on my tentative IDs of the others? DS (talk) 13:41, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Definitely a wren. Shyamal (talk) 14:31, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Definitely a wren. Which wren, I don't know. I'm fairly confident about the Whimbrel, too. Vanamonde (Talk) 14:38, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Honestly, I doubt the PSF Corporation cared about anything more specific (no pun intended) than "wren". Good to know I got the whimbrel right - is #4 indeed a whippoorwill? DS (talk) 23:59, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Anti-bird-strike measures. Does anybody have any cites to contribute to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bird_strike#%22a_white_circle_which_discourages_birds_from_flying_into_the_engine%22 ?

I'm dubious about an un-cited claim. Does anyone know about, or have cites for this question?

Discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bird_strike#%22a_white_circle_which_discourages_birds_from_flying_into_the_engine%22

Thanks - 2804:14D:5C59:8300:0:0:0:1000 (talk) 00:13, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Apparently designed for people to detect running engines to maintain distance - and is not known to effectively deter birds - see https://aerosavvy.com/aircraft-engine-spirals/ - misconceptions listed here - Boeing should be reliable enough (!). Shyamal (talk) 07:47, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Clements list as a standard

It appears that a couple of editors are planning to make all regional lists (outside of the AOC zone) uniformly follow Clements rather than IOC, not sure what the others feel about this. Shyamal (talk) 06:44, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Should have a much wider, central discussion than on some random talk page for sure. Would be best if the discussion ceased there and continued here if it has wider ramifications. FunkMonk (talk) 06:59, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

@Craigthebirder: @Pvmoutside:

This was discussed at length in 2017 here and I don't believe much has changed since then. I notice that the latest annual Clements/eBird update (August 2019) includes a large number of changes which they claim will make their list more closely align with that of the IOC and HBW - see here. - Aa77zz (talk) 10:51, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Most of the country lists seem to have been created in 2007 using Clements taxonomy, and most of them retain it. Some however, for example List of birds of Great Britain and List of birds of Australia, have been converted to local taxonomies, and I converted most of the western hemisphere lists to American Ornithological Society (AOS) taxonomy a couple of years ago. I know of no objections to these changes; certainly there were none about my changes to the western hemisphere lists. Lists using IOC taxonomy are a very small minority, so with few exceptions it's not a matter of making lists follow Clements but of either retaining Clements or returning to it as the original. But if editors with a particular interest in a country list think its taxonomy should follow IOC, I have no objection. I do strongly object to a wholesale conversion of existing Clements-based lists to IOC. Craigthebirder (talk) 13:50, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

• As a "standard" for what? ~ cygnis insignis 15:04, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Craigthebirder's and Aa77zz statements. Most of the lists reference Clements as the basis for their reference. A couple have local references, and Craigthebirder lists the ones he's been using for reference. A couple of lists have no reference point, so I took it upon myself to create where needed. Many lists, except for the ones Craigthebirder had been keeping up with, have been out of date for a while, so many need updating. I've been doing some as time allows....Pvmoutside (talk) 20:52, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

If I remember right, many of the country lists were created using Denis LePage's Avibase lists (the only lists by countries available online then, but, filled with errors at least in the case of India and using American spellings such as "gray") as a source and not due to any specific preference for Clements. Clements was probably the starting point for the IOC Standing Committee on English Names as well which was probably created sometime around 2007. WP:BIRD's use of the IOC names only gained traction because of the regular taxonomic updates and easy access of the IOC checklist. I do not think a principle of priority of usage (following the convention used when the list was created on Wikipedia) is particularly applicable here - we were being progressive with the use of IOC's updates. Shyamal (talk) 03:28, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

So, are you proposing that the several hundred lists of birds which use something other than IOC taxonomy be converted? Craigthebirder (talk) 00:28, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Mystery bird

Hi all, I'm working on bringing the first alphabetical animal species, Apororhynchus, (based on taxonomy) up to featured status (for fun?), and I came across a bird mystery you may be able to help me with.

The parasite was said to be found in Santos, Brazil infecting a "Oriolus cristatus" [18]. This name I cannot find any record of otherwise, except another keen user found it as a reference to an Indian bird [19] which does not make sense. In a slightly newer reference[20], they call it "Cacicus cristatus", also not a modern name. My question is, is there any way to determine exactly what bird this is from these references? Thanks! Mattximus (talk) 01:47, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Number 2 bird depicted here is Cacicus cristatus[21], so if anyone can see what that is, we should have it... Also covered on this page:[22] FunkMonk (talk) 02:03, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Another mention that lists alternate names:[23] FunkMonk (talk) 02:11, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you everyone, and thank you FunkMonk, that reference links the original Cacicus cristatus with Cacicus cristatus, which was a missing link for me. I think I can conclusively say that it is Psarocolius decumanus. Thanks again! Mattximus (talk) 19:49, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Wood 1889 [24] calls Cacicus cristatus the crested cassique. Lydekker 1895 [25] names the same bird Ostinops decumanus. Now Psarocolius decumanus? 2001:569:7CF0:9300:692E:3F68:CE53:5338 (talk) 06:51, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Seems to match the picture[26] too. FunkMonk (talk) 10:04, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

New member

Is this project still going on.? If so how can one become a member of it.? I would really like to join the team and contribute. I am a passionate birder who has been birding in the Indian sub continent for more than 6 years. --Akasmita (talk) 04:01, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

@Akasmita:Howdy hello! This project is still very active and dedicated to improving bird articles of all kinds! To join, see this page, where you can add your name. Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 16:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Saint Croix macaw name

I've been working on the Saint Croix macaw article, but just noticed that the name "Saint Croix macaw" is not actually used by any sources (all Googled references refer back to Wikipedia), so I suspect it was made up for the article. The only name that seems to have been used is "Puerto Rican macaw", by at least Joseph Forshaw and Julian Hume. So should the article be moved there? The bird also does not seem to be covered by the IUCN or Birdlife, so it's hard to find any list of recognised names. FunkMonk (talk) 05:22, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Ok, scratch most of the above, it does seem that a number of sources use the name "S. Croix macaw", but that of course raises another question, should the article be moved to that title instead of the current one? Or should it be moved to "Puerto Rican macaw", since this is used by the most recent sources? FunkMonk (talk) 05:26, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

• I went ahead and moved it to St. Croix macaw, as no sources spell out "Saint". But it is still unclear if it should properly be at Puerto Rican macaw. I'll ping Maias and Melly42, who usually have something to say about this subject. FunkMonk (talk) 16:30, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Would much prefer Saint Croix ('St.' is only an abbreviation).Maias (talk) 11:26, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

The problem is, not a single source uses that form, so it is rather iffy. FunkMonk (talk) 11:28, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I note that the title of the island article uses the expanded form. Maias (talk) 12:16, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Can't say why, though, as the article itself is extremely inconsistent in which form it uses (switching use from section to section, even within sections). In this case, I think all we can do is follow the sources relevant to the bird. Pinging SMcCandlish, who has an interest in title consistency. Aa77zz may also be able to check out usage of the birds name. Also, there is the name "Puerto Rican macaw" to consider, which is the name used in the most recent sources. FunkMonk (talk) 14:00, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I haven't researched the name but I'm very surprised that the article uses the abbreviation "St." in the title. In wiki articles I try to avoid using abbreviations. - Aa77zz (talk) 18:50, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Hard to say what the rules are. We also have St. Louis; if this is the proper name for the city, then that's what should be used. But how to establish it for a bird which isn't even covered by Birdlife? From what I can see, all the sources that refer to this bird by a common name use "St.", if they don't call it "Puerto Rican macaw", of course. Every single online source on the web which uses "Saint" refer back to Wikipedia, even one book source. FunkMonk (talk) 13:46, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

MOS:SAINT says "Cities and other entities follow common English-language usage in reliable sources – see St. Louis but Saint Petersburg." Presumably a parrot falls under "other entities". :-) William Avery (talk) 14:23, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, didn't know there was such a specific guideline. Well, in that case, it seems we would have to go with St. (if we use that instead of Puerto Rican macaw). FunkMonk (talk) 14:53, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

What is wrong with using Ara autocthones as the title? WP:COMMONNAME says to use the name found in "independent, reliable English-language sources". Are there any reliable English-language sources that do not mention Ara autocthones as a name for this topic?Plantdrew (talk) 04:01, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, the bird project de facto convention seems to be common names. Can't think of any bird species with common names that are placed at the binomial. Also, the recent sources use the common name in sections that deal with this bird. FunkMonk (talk) 04:09, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

New info about Snowball the cockatoo

I'm using the internet on my Kindle and I can't cut and paste links.

can I request an edit for Snowball (cockatoo)? He's been the subject of news reports again recently due to the fact that a new study has been published. If you look on Google News, you'll see it. About him coming up with his own dance moves.

Thank you. I don't know if anyone will see it if I put it on the article tak page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.90.140.124 (talk) 01:53, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Identify bird based on very little information

As before, can anyone identify the bird in this line art, for which all we know is that the name of its species begins with "W"? Thanks. DS (talk) 04:44, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Unidentified W-bird

Looks like a weaverbird Ploceus. Shyamal (talk) 05:27, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Endemic birds of western and central Africa

The article Endemic birds of western and central Africa is IMO incomplete and lacks any sort of relevance (based on a political rather than geo-environmental area). Wouldn't it be more useful deleting or why not renaming it according to another, more meaningful area of presence, e.g. « birds of Equatorial Africa » ; there are many birds which share a range of distribution that corresponds +/- exactly to the African tropical equatorial rainforest region: the contiguous region including areas around the gulf of Guinea and Central Africa (see below) ; c.f. also (in French) Liste des oiseaux d'Afrique équatoriale --Couiros22 (talk) 13:52, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

I'd support deleting it. In addition to its referring to an ill-defined area, it has no actual content. And its 2006 creator hasn't contributed to it since then. Craigthebirder (talk) 16:25, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Agree this is a useless article. Looks completely empty of any actual content, the only thing there is a list (probably incomplete) of five Endemic Bird Areas. Eostrix (talk) 07:33, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

I also agree it should be deleted.....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:16, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

I PRODed it. [27]. Eostrix (talk) 13:57, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Macgregor's Bowerbird - wrong illustration

On the Macgregor's Bowerbird page, the image is of Loria's Satinbird, Cnemophilus loriae, which is in a different Family. (I've only done minimal editing in Wikipedia, and am not up to changing an illustration.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tapaculo47 (talk • contribs) 17:41, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks for pointing this out. I'm removed the image from Macgregor's bowerbird and changed the description and category of the image. Unfortumately commons doesn't appear to have any pictures of Macgregor's bowerbird. - Aa77zz (talk) 19:31, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response! (I'm not sure f the right way to respond to this.) This bird is featured in a new Netflix documentary "Dancing with the Birds", which includes startling footage of this bird's mimicry... so there might be more traffic to Wikipedia and I'm glad this was fixed. I wonder if there is a proper way to get an image from Netflix... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tapaculo47 (talk • contribs) 03:23, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

First annual Tree of Life Decemberween contest

After all the fun with the Spooky Species Contest last month, there's a new contest for the (Northern hemisphere's) Winter holidays at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Contest. It's not just Christmas, but anything festive from December-ish. Feel free to add some ideas to the Festive taxa list and enter early and often. --Nessie (talk) 18:10, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Birding and birdwatching categories

FYI: I have opened a CFD discussion regarding merging the two categories for Birding and Birdwatching. If you wish to share your views on this, please join the discussion here. Regards, Anomalous+0 (talk) 00:56, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Gender and sex

Happy New Year, if it is yours today. Here is an IP changing Gender to Sex on the Blue Tit article and here is me changing it back ... not because I believe that am right but (please see my rambling edit summary) because it looks like a big topic and I am hoping that there is some established custom and practice here or in the MOS or something? And, yes, I know I could go and look it all up for myself but my early attempt was not encouraging and the whole point/hope of posting here is that someone who reads it simply knows the answer and will tell me it, which is, I think, a far better solution. Cheers DBaK (talk) 14:40, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Wouldn’t gender not apply? Gender is a human construct, or atleast requires some sapience. Sex is the biological, rather than sociological. --Nessie (talk) 15:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I believe the IP is right – outside the realm of grammar, gender is a social construct or social expression of sexual orientation; sex is determined by chromosomes. Birds are blissfully innocent of the former, so "sexes" is the right word in the context. No idea if that's codified anywhere in Wikipedia, but it shouldn't be contentious ... or is it? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:01, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Whatever – I have reverted myself. Best wishes DBaK (talk) 17:23, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree, gender is a distinctly human concept. It should not be used outside of the human context. Luckily, I do not believe that is contentious. Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:03, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Albatross flight

In your page on the Albatross you state that,the extraordinary flight duration is achieved by, "dynamic soaring and slope soaring", I would like to suggest another phenomenon the bird probably benefits from: high pressure air. This can be easily demonstrated by a simple experiment ; partly fill a basin with water , with enough room and access to allow manual agitation while covering most of it with thin polystyrene,e.g. 3mm "Depron".When the water is made to form crests the poly cover rises immediately. The sea bird has only to stay over the rising crests of swells ( probably on the forward edge/slope) as they move through the water, to be always in rising , high pressure,air.Gliding does the rest. Slope soaring" ,as in your article, is only possible when a steady wind is rising up the slope.Swells move with the wind (and due to the wind) so there may not be an opposing wind.the swell is moving with the wind. Cold air in high latitudes is much more dense and supporting than warm air ' perhaps 20% more . The seas in those latitudes generally have stronger and more continuous swells. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:CB19:874A:9F00:2CAA:881E:1E62:A2D7 (talk) 21:41, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I do not understand your experiment nor how it relates to the flight of birds; nevertheless, I am not saying that you are wrong.

I recall seeing albatrosses on TV flying and that they do not "ride" an up-draft of air at the crest of waves. To me, they soar over the ocean and fly across waves.

I think albatross's apparent effortless flight may have something to do with the different speeds of wind at different heights above sea level. Air moves more slowly close to the sea than higher up. As the albatross adjusts altitude near to the sea surface, it is able to move into an air current travelling at a different speed to itself, and use it to maintain its altitude or gain altitude. It's like it is being catapulted into the the air just by changing altitude. Any comments? Snowman (talk) 20:05, 2 January 2020 (UTC)