![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | → | Archive 15 |
It's that time again. I don't have a book of Southern African birds with me. It is clearly a greenbul of some description though. Any thoughts? Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I neglected to mention this sooner, sorry, but yet more birds-by-order types have been proposed, and the passerines are getting huger by the instant: I've proposed re-splitting, here. Since some of these taxons have no corresponding "permcat" at present, there's no immediate precedent on whether to use "common" or Latin names for these. Please comment on these as you see fit. Alai 07:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
And again! The blessing/curse of Polbot, part #57... Type is hugely larger still, I've updated the proposal with a much longer list of viable-looking by-family subtypes. Alai 07:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I've re-sorted these enough that nothing's currently "officially oversized", but I won't claim that things are optimally organised just yet. Before I start to contemplate whether Category:Passerida stubs, Category:Corvida stubs and the like are indicated, could domain-knowledgeable people have a look as they stand currently? Alai 23:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Currently, I noticed that the genus Hylocichla redirects to Wood Thrush, the only species in that genus. Do separate articles still need to be made for genera where there is only one species? (I think Xanthomyza's only species is the Regent Honeyeater) Cheers, Corvus coronoides talk 20:38, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
There is currently a debate underway at the main wikipedia manual of style regarding whether common names of animals should carry an initial capital letter (horse or Horse) when used in the body of the text. As the outcome may affect your project, if anyone would like to contribute to the debate, with either view, please visit Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Common names of animals. Thanks for your time. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:09, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
this would require some input from use here.....cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 01:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
This was accidentally placed on the main project page. I've moved it here.
Sheep81
08:54, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I think it's both a pity and somewhat illogical that we have no
animal WikiProject despite the fact that there are over 20 projects that are basically its daughters. There are also other projects that could emerge from it in the future, such as one on
animal behavior. The project would provide a central place for people from all animal projects to talk, a central set of guidelines for articles on animals and zoology, and an assessment system for articles related to animals. If you are interested in creating such a project please visit
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life#Animals project to discuss.
Richard001
08:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
The following projects would come under the parentage of this project:
Turdoides striata or Turdoides striatus? Current Jungle Babbler article uses the latter, but I just merged a Polbot stub of the former. Both spellings appear in google searches, not sure which is correct myself. - MPF 21:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I found doi: 10.1007/s10336-007-0185-6 which is way cool. It's not published yet, so either you guys might check it out, or I'll get it some time and mail it to you. It's so nice to have a seabird that smells of citrus instead of the more usual old-fish-and-maybe-stomach-oil... and especially as they seem to sniff their perfumed crests as a social display. How cute is that? Dysmorodrepanis 17:28, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, sifting through the papers (namely "Raptors at Risk") I have found a problem: regarding mtDNA, the Peregrine and the Barbary Falcon are indistinguishable. Wink et al. support merging them. However, later it turned out that for example the Saker Falcon ist not monophyletic regarding mtDNA, which is obviously the result of hybridization. A similar effect is present in the Barbary Falcon, but the latter is also very very close to the Peregrine (the Saker is altogether more distant, only some populations have hybridized with Peregrine/Barbary-ancestors in the past). The most consistent scenario would be that the Barbary is a side branch of the very same radiation that produced the Peregrine subspecies, and phylogenetically it is not more distant than any of them. Altogether, all Peregrines and the Barbaries are derived from an ancestor that must have lived no later than the Early-Mid Pleistocene boundary[*]! (That is to say, the entire group is barely older than modern human's direct ancestors.)
[*] I assume a mtDNA sequence divergence of about 1% per 1 - 1.5 million years which is about as reasonable as anyone can guess - amniotes which take 1 year to sexual maturity have around 2% per million years, but falcons don't become sexually mature til 2 or 3 years old.
But that's only one half of the problem. A taxon can be of as recent an ancestry as some relatives, but if it is reproductively distinctly more isolated than the others, it would be appropriate to consider it a species. Monophyly is not a criterion that ought to be used 100% strictly (I think) because cladistic analyses assume that all lineage divergences happen instantaneously and sympatrically due to limitiations in the methodology (lineages have a width of 1, and of course, there is no way yet to integrate GIS data with phylogenetic data in a cladogram).
Thus the case for merging or splitting is unresolvable to me at present. I will continue to search for newer data, but if anyone knows some publication, I'd be glad to consult that. I have Birds of the Western Palearctic and HBW, but both are also older works. In the end, it's a "total evidence" question, and will probably boil down to biogeography and behavior (selective mating) making the decision. The mtDNA data is hopelessly confounded, and nDNA can't be hoped to give useful information at all.
In any case, I'll go over the subspecies of the Peregrine these days, because the morph kreyenborgi is missing and there's a nice paper discussing that semi-leucistic variant. Dysmorodrepanis 18:04, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. I am thinking about creating a template to help the bird list articles like this one: List of California birds. The use of the template would be that we could have the bird-family heading descriptions in one place so that they can all be consistent and changed easily. A single template could house the whole thing in the form {{birdlistheadings |family=Procellariidae |area=Chile |count=36}}. I think area and count would be optional; they would produce "there are 75 species worldwide and 36 species which occur in Chile", if desired. What do you think? -- Basar ( talk · contribs) 00:48, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Since nobody seems to be willing to fix that awkward referencing situation on WP and looking through the markup code, I found no quick fix myself and besides I'm in the mood for some falcon stuff, I had this idea:
The problem with all referencing done by the < ref > is twofold: first, it creates a lot of overhead in the maintext source that is unhelpful to inexperienced editors and really does not need to be there. Also, it results in reference lists that are very chaotic and that makes it unnecessarily protracted in much-referenced articles to check whether a source has been added already, and where. Also, if one doesn't use plugins, the whole article needs to be edited if one wants to check the reference for spelling mistakes and formatting, and it is often very nice to have the possibility for true "footnotes", i.e. explanatory comments (for example when I have a molecular phylogeny paper, it often needs to be remarked that the molecular clock model is uncalibrated and unreliable and way so, but that's simply too long to put it in the maintext)
Thus, how about this:
< ref > as is commonly done, but do not cite the whole reference there, rather a Harvard citation. Use "Footnotes" and "References" sections. Cite references in a neat alphabetic list in the latter.
This might seem a bit complicated, but I think to the casual reader, it is not so much necessary to know the exact details of a source, but more that a source exists and can be checked if need be. Whereas to the professional or expert, a well-sorted reference section is indispensable, and if done like this, it can be used, edited and messed around with (copy/pasting references for other articles becomes more easy) at leisure. References are moreover easily found, because people now don't use a standard format - I and others try to pack as much info in there as can be found, whereas many simply copy/paste from PubMed which has a somewhat more reduced format, and others only give first author et al in a very brief citation itself, so searching the < ref > notes is not necessarily a guarantee to find a reference - an alphabetical list, on the other hand, ought to be.
There is another advantage: as information becomes more well-referenced, this approach would prevent the "array of numbers" problem (see the Casualties list at Operation Arrowhead Ripper and check out the source code... UGLY! No way inexperienced users could edit that without breaking it) - a single < ref > would be enough, because the sources themselves would only be pointed at therein.
What do you think? If it's OK, I'll try this in Peregrine Falcon so you can check out how it looks like. (If it's bad, it can be easily reverted simply by copying the sources into the tags. No information is lost). Dysmorodrepanis 09:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Anyone an expert on this bird? The categories need a good cleaning, as I'm not so sure all those "birds of..." categories are suitable. Categories should be important things: not just any (or all) things somewhat related to the subject. If the bird has a small population in a country (or countries), then I don't think the category needs to be there. RobJ1981 04:49, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Bay Owl should be Bay owl as it is a genus not species, and the Congo Bay-owl needs to move to Congo Bay Owl. Cheers. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:20, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
I've been knocking out stubs for some of these, but I wonder if there is any criterion for validity. For example, Melaniparus does not have a ITIS entry, and is not treated as a fully accepted genus on the tit page. Jimfbleak 10:04, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
OK then, let's give it a try. Place your name against a letter. Then visit
List of bird genera and check the articles starting with that letter. When you've checked for any hidden missing genera, add these to the "To Do" section below in the form [[Elvira (genus)|Elvira]], and then mark the letter here as complete. I'll take the obvious letter S.
there's this! Jimfbleak 05:48, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
User:Mmcannis is busy adding lots of cats to bird articles based on locations - but formatting them so they turn up on the category pages organised by type, so Red Fan-parrots are listed under F and Red-crowned Parakeets coming under P. I asked if there was a reason at Wikiproject Categories and was told it was the projects call to make which way we wanted it. Personally I prefer them to be alphabetical, so that Cassin's Auklet is found at C not A. Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
We need to do a clean out of the old nominations in the Collaboration of the Month; it's supposed to happen after three months. I suggest that any nomination that doesn't have a vote in the last month come the next choice 9end of the month) gets cleaned out and we nominate some new articles. Sabine's Sunbird talk 22:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Can I interest anybody in making Brachypteryx, Heinrichia, Turdidae, and Muscicapidae consistent on what family these birds are in (or whether we don't know)? — JerryFriedman 17:36, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
This might be a bigger problem than the shortwings. We list Drepanididae as a separate family and Fringillidae doesn't contain them, but all the drepanidid genera I looked at have Fringillidae in the taxobox. I realize this is a controversial topic, but can we make it consistent? I'd be happy with "Drepanididae or Fringillidae" in the taxoboxes. — JerryFriedman 17:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm... we run Paleognathae and Neognathae as superorders, which is the way it was traditionally done and how everybody who doesn't know that galliforms + anseriforms stand apart does it. Would it not be more logical to adopt the scheme of Galloanserae - there is, after all, still space for an infraclass below Neornithes?
I wouldn't take it as far as use "parvclasses" which is theoretically possible and in any case, we will inevitably have to use unranked taxa when the Neoaves are picked apart which may be this year or never. But at present, only one unranked taxon is allowed per Linnean rank - and only Linné's original "large" ranks, so no unranked_infraclassis - which kind of defeats the purpose of the system (to make taxonomic levels as dense as need be). The dino folks are running into all sorts of problems, their theropod taxoboxes are quite inconsistent indeed.
So I suggest we rack the -gnaths up to infraclass, allowing for superorders Galloanserae and Neoaves, because these, as far as anyone can tell, are good and true. A simple explanation, about how they were traditionally placed as superorders but with the Galloanseres being recognized widely this is impractical, and it showing that Linnean ranks do not represent fixed "levels" in evolution, would be as much of an addition to the article texts as is needed.
Thus, the occasional reader would also learn an important thing or two about taxonomy; many still think that an order of birds is the equivalent of an order of, say, insects. But it's not; Linné simply counted through the diversity of life from the species on upwards. Dysmorodrepanis 15:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Would others consider a standardized morphometrics infobox useful for the bird articles with tarsus, wing, length, tail, bill and weights with sections for races and subsections marking gender if required. Shyamal 06:30, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I've got a lot of good photos of common North American Midwestern US birds, and some others from Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Ecuador, which I'm happy to submit to Wikipedia for free use since my focus is education and conservation. I noticed last week that the Wikipedia photo for the Le Conte's Sparrow entry is pretty grainy and distant, without a larger photo available. I submitted LESP-Erickson, and don't know how, or if, to add it or substitute it on the Le Conte's Sparrow page. Suggestions? Also, I'm not very knowledgeable about technical matters, so if my photos like this one might be useful, I'd need some step-by-step instructions for what to do. (I hope this is the right place to ask this.) Laura Erickson 14:12, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I've just added List of years in birding and ornithology to the "pages requested" section. Please see the few existing pages for layout. Thank you.
Also, I suggest that year links in birding articles link to one of the above, and not the general year, as happens in other genres - so 2005 not 2005
I decided this picture might be identifiable. Anyone care to take a shot? Sweetwaters Game Reserve, central Kenya, I think it was savanna habitat.
Also, User:JMK has been correcting some of my identifications of African birds. The discussion is at his Commons talk page. The ones he was least sure of, so I'd like someone to review them, are below
— JerryFriedman 02:40, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Anyone know the source of Ammamanopsis on the list of bird genera? There's nothing like that in Wikipedia, Zoonomen, the IUCN, or Avibase.
Also, the reason Euodice and Spermestes are on the list of redlinked bird genera is that we merge them into Lonchura. Any reason we shouldn't just delete them from the list? — JerryFriedman 22:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
two new images have been added to this page, which don't look like Accipiter hawks to me, more like Buteo species. can anyone make a positive ID and move them to the correct page(s). Jimfbleak 05:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Just a heads up that photographers are becoming entrenched - here anyone want to intervene/suggest a way forward? also any thoughts on the hawk item above Jimfbleak 17:32, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Professional attention required, I think.
-
Vendée (region of France) references a historical royalist faction called the
Chouans (screech owls). (So naturally I wanted to link this.)
-
Screech owl says
The term screech owl can mean:
The barn owl, the primary British meaning of the term (from its discordant cry which is supposed to be an evil omen)
Any of various small American owls of the genus Otus, allied to the Scops owls – especially the Eastern Screech Owl of North America
-
Barn owl (Tyto alba) makes no mention of these birds ever being called "screech owls".
-
Otus redirects to
Scops owl.
Scops owl says "Scops owls belong to the genus Otus of owls", and lists several dozen species. Does this mean that "Scops owls belong to Otus, and there are other species of Otus as well", or does it mean that the terms "Scops owl" and "Otus" are synonymous?
-
Eastern Screech Owl gives the genus and species as Megascops asio, in contradiction to
Screech owl, which says that they are Otus. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
201.19.11.75 (
talk) 15:27, August 28, 2007 (UTC)
The current
WikiProject Birds collaboration article is
Preening (bird). The previous collaboration was: Tinamou. Feel free to cast your vote for next month's article |
I posted a to-do list on the talk page. I have also cleared out old nominations from the collaboration of the month page (that hadn't gotten any votes lately), so we can nominate some new articles. Sabine's Sunbird talk 21:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I found this spectacular image on Flickr to illustrate the concept of clay licks, but I don't have a birds of Ecuador book handy. There are clearly three kinds of parrot present, a macaw, an amazon and a smaller parakeet. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
It's an Amazon parrot - but what species? Anyone know? Thanks very much. -- Kurt Shaped Box 19:09, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I just noticed that the WikiProject Birds/Article requests/Species include requests for a range of species from the P. picta complex. Being fairly new to wiki, just a two questions before I start pages on these:
1) Any standardized taxonomy here on wiki or do people just follow whatever they find most appropriate in the specific cases? The split of the P. picta complex, as initially proposed (for ref. see Joseph, L., 2002, on Pyrrhura page), is widely disregarded by Neotropical Ornithologists, as there really were too many loose ends. This has been somewhat dealt with by Ribas et al., 2006 (again see Pyrrhura for full ref.), which doesn't solve the matter entirely, but still manage better than the earlier "lets split everything" approach. Before just editing away and following the specific taxonomy I prefer, I'd rather ask what others think:
2) If following the second or third approach as described above, what to do about Pyrrhura roseifrons? Only a single English name has ever been attributed to this taxon: Red-crowned Parakeet. Unfortunately this name is currently used for the Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae article (a species which, in its native range, widely is referred to as the Red-crowned Parakeet). Perhaps moving C. novaezelandiae to the Red-fronted Parakeet would be the best approach (this name already redirects to the C. novaezelandiae article), as this is the name used by the major World lists which recognize it as a distinct species (Clements, Gill & Wright and Howard & Moore). This would leave Red-crowned Parakeet available for the P. roseifrons article. Any input on this and the earlier matter would be appreciated. Rabo3 22:09, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | → | Archive 15 |
It's that time again. I don't have a book of Southern African birds with me. It is clearly a greenbul of some description though. Any thoughts? Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I neglected to mention this sooner, sorry, but yet more birds-by-order types have been proposed, and the passerines are getting huger by the instant: I've proposed re-splitting, here. Since some of these taxons have no corresponding "permcat" at present, there's no immediate precedent on whether to use "common" or Latin names for these. Please comment on these as you see fit. Alai 07:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
And again! The blessing/curse of Polbot, part #57... Type is hugely larger still, I've updated the proposal with a much longer list of viable-looking by-family subtypes. Alai 07:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I've re-sorted these enough that nothing's currently "officially oversized", but I won't claim that things are optimally organised just yet. Before I start to contemplate whether Category:Passerida stubs, Category:Corvida stubs and the like are indicated, could domain-knowledgeable people have a look as they stand currently? Alai 23:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Currently, I noticed that the genus Hylocichla redirects to Wood Thrush, the only species in that genus. Do separate articles still need to be made for genera where there is only one species? (I think Xanthomyza's only species is the Regent Honeyeater) Cheers, Corvus coronoides talk 20:38, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
There is currently a debate underway at the main wikipedia manual of style regarding whether common names of animals should carry an initial capital letter (horse or Horse) when used in the body of the text. As the outcome may affect your project, if anyone would like to contribute to the debate, with either view, please visit Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Common names of animals. Thanks for your time. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:09, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
this would require some input from use here.....cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 01:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
This was accidentally placed on the main project page. I've moved it here.
Sheep81
08:54, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I think it's both a pity and somewhat illogical that we have no
animal WikiProject despite the fact that there are over 20 projects that are basically its daughters. There are also other projects that could emerge from it in the future, such as one on
animal behavior. The project would provide a central place for people from all animal projects to talk, a central set of guidelines for articles on animals and zoology, and an assessment system for articles related to animals. If you are interested in creating such a project please visit
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life#Animals project to discuss.
Richard001
08:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
The following projects would come under the parentage of this project:
Turdoides striata or Turdoides striatus? Current Jungle Babbler article uses the latter, but I just merged a Polbot stub of the former. Both spellings appear in google searches, not sure which is correct myself. - MPF 21:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I found doi: 10.1007/s10336-007-0185-6 which is way cool. It's not published yet, so either you guys might check it out, or I'll get it some time and mail it to you. It's so nice to have a seabird that smells of citrus instead of the more usual old-fish-and-maybe-stomach-oil... and especially as they seem to sniff their perfumed crests as a social display. How cute is that? Dysmorodrepanis 17:28, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, sifting through the papers (namely "Raptors at Risk") I have found a problem: regarding mtDNA, the Peregrine and the Barbary Falcon are indistinguishable. Wink et al. support merging them. However, later it turned out that for example the Saker Falcon ist not monophyletic regarding mtDNA, which is obviously the result of hybridization. A similar effect is present in the Barbary Falcon, but the latter is also very very close to the Peregrine (the Saker is altogether more distant, only some populations have hybridized with Peregrine/Barbary-ancestors in the past). The most consistent scenario would be that the Barbary is a side branch of the very same radiation that produced the Peregrine subspecies, and phylogenetically it is not more distant than any of them. Altogether, all Peregrines and the Barbaries are derived from an ancestor that must have lived no later than the Early-Mid Pleistocene boundary[*]! (That is to say, the entire group is barely older than modern human's direct ancestors.)
[*] I assume a mtDNA sequence divergence of about 1% per 1 - 1.5 million years which is about as reasonable as anyone can guess - amniotes which take 1 year to sexual maturity have around 2% per million years, but falcons don't become sexually mature til 2 or 3 years old.
But that's only one half of the problem. A taxon can be of as recent an ancestry as some relatives, but if it is reproductively distinctly more isolated than the others, it would be appropriate to consider it a species. Monophyly is not a criterion that ought to be used 100% strictly (I think) because cladistic analyses assume that all lineage divergences happen instantaneously and sympatrically due to limitiations in the methodology (lineages have a width of 1, and of course, there is no way yet to integrate GIS data with phylogenetic data in a cladogram).
Thus the case for merging or splitting is unresolvable to me at present. I will continue to search for newer data, but if anyone knows some publication, I'd be glad to consult that. I have Birds of the Western Palearctic and HBW, but both are also older works. In the end, it's a "total evidence" question, and will probably boil down to biogeography and behavior (selective mating) making the decision. The mtDNA data is hopelessly confounded, and nDNA can't be hoped to give useful information at all.
In any case, I'll go over the subspecies of the Peregrine these days, because the morph kreyenborgi is missing and there's a nice paper discussing that semi-leucistic variant. Dysmorodrepanis 18:04, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. I am thinking about creating a template to help the bird list articles like this one: List of California birds. The use of the template would be that we could have the bird-family heading descriptions in one place so that they can all be consistent and changed easily. A single template could house the whole thing in the form {{birdlistheadings |family=Procellariidae |area=Chile |count=36}}. I think area and count would be optional; they would produce "there are 75 species worldwide and 36 species which occur in Chile", if desired. What do you think? -- Basar ( talk · contribs) 00:48, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Since nobody seems to be willing to fix that awkward referencing situation on WP and looking through the markup code, I found no quick fix myself and besides I'm in the mood for some falcon stuff, I had this idea:
The problem with all referencing done by the < ref > is twofold: first, it creates a lot of overhead in the maintext source that is unhelpful to inexperienced editors and really does not need to be there. Also, it results in reference lists that are very chaotic and that makes it unnecessarily protracted in much-referenced articles to check whether a source has been added already, and where. Also, if one doesn't use plugins, the whole article needs to be edited if one wants to check the reference for spelling mistakes and formatting, and it is often very nice to have the possibility for true "footnotes", i.e. explanatory comments (for example when I have a molecular phylogeny paper, it often needs to be remarked that the molecular clock model is uncalibrated and unreliable and way so, but that's simply too long to put it in the maintext)
Thus, how about this:
< ref > as is commonly done, but do not cite the whole reference there, rather a Harvard citation. Use "Footnotes" and "References" sections. Cite references in a neat alphabetic list in the latter.
This might seem a bit complicated, but I think to the casual reader, it is not so much necessary to know the exact details of a source, but more that a source exists and can be checked if need be. Whereas to the professional or expert, a well-sorted reference section is indispensable, and if done like this, it can be used, edited and messed around with (copy/pasting references for other articles becomes more easy) at leisure. References are moreover easily found, because people now don't use a standard format - I and others try to pack as much info in there as can be found, whereas many simply copy/paste from PubMed which has a somewhat more reduced format, and others only give first author et al in a very brief citation itself, so searching the < ref > notes is not necessarily a guarantee to find a reference - an alphabetical list, on the other hand, ought to be.
There is another advantage: as information becomes more well-referenced, this approach would prevent the "array of numbers" problem (see the Casualties list at Operation Arrowhead Ripper and check out the source code... UGLY! No way inexperienced users could edit that without breaking it) - a single < ref > would be enough, because the sources themselves would only be pointed at therein.
What do you think? If it's OK, I'll try this in Peregrine Falcon so you can check out how it looks like. (If it's bad, it can be easily reverted simply by copying the sources into the tags. No information is lost). Dysmorodrepanis 09:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Anyone an expert on this bird? The categories need a good cleaning, as I'm not so sure all those "birds of..." categories are suitable. Categories should be important things: not just any (or all) things somewhat related to the subject. If the bird has a small population in a country (or countries), then I don't think the category needs to be there. RobJ1981 04:49, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Bay Owl should be Bay owl as it is a genus not species, and the Congo Bay-owl needs to move to Congo Bay Owl. Cheers. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:20, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
I've been knocking out stubs for some of these, but I wonder if there is any criterion for validity. For example, Melaniparus does not have a ITIS entry, and is not treated as a fully accepted genus on the tit page. Jimfbleak 10:04, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
OK then, let's give it a try. Place your name against a letter. Then visit
List of bird genera and check the articles starting with that letter. When you've checked for any hidden missing genera, add these to the "To Do" section below in the form [[Elvira (genus)|Elvira]], and then mark the letter here as complete. I'll take the obvious letter S.
there's this! Jimfbleak 05:48, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
User:Mmcannis is busy adding lots of cats to bird articles based on locations - but formatting them so they turn up on the category pages organised by type, so Red Fan-parrots are listed under F and Red-crowned Parakeets coming under P. I asked if there was a reason at Wikiproject Categories and was told it was the projects call to make which way we wanted it. Personally I prefer them to be alphabetical, so that Cassin's Auklet is found at C not A. Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
We need to do a clean out of the old nominations in the Collaboration of the Month; it's supposed to happen after three months. I suggest that any nomination that doesn't have a vote in the last month come the next choice 9end of the month) gets cleaned out and we nominate some new articles. Sabine's Sunbird talk 22:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Can I interest anybody in making Brachypteryx, Heinrichia, Turdidae, and Muscicapidae consistent on what family these birds are in (or whether we don't know)? — JerryFriedman 17:36, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
This might be a bigger problem than the shortwings. We list Drepanididae as a separate family and Fringillidae doesn't contain them, but all the drepanidid genera I looked at have Fringillidae in the taxobox. I realize this is a controversial topic, but can we make it consistent? I'd be happy with "Drepanididae or Fringillidae" in the taxoboxes. — JerryFriedman 17:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm... we run Paleognathae and Neognathae as superorders, which is the way it was traditionally done and how everybody who doesn't know that galliforms + anseriforms stand apart does it. Would it not be more logical to adopt the scheme of Galloanserae - there is, after all, still space for an infraclass below Neornithes?
I wouldn't take it as far as use "parvclasses" which is theoretically possible and in any case, we will inevitably have to use unranked taxa when the Neoaves are picked apart which may be this year or never. But at present, only one unranked taxon is allowed per Linnean rank - and only Linné's original "large" ranks, so no unranked_infraclassis - which kind of defeats the purpose of the system (to make taxonomic levels as dense as need be). The dino folks are running into all sorts of problems, their theropod taxoboxes are quite inconsistent indeed.
So I suggest we rack the -gnaths up to infraclass, allowing for superorders Galloanserae and Neoaves, because these, as far as anyone can tell, are good and true. A simple explanation, about how they were traditionally placed as superorders but with the Galloanseres being recognized widely this is impractical, and it showing that Linnean ranks do not represent fixed "levels" in evolution, would be as much of an addition to the article texts as is needed.
Thus, the occasional reader would also learn an important thing or two about taxonomy; many still think that an order of birds is the equivalent of an order of, say, insects. But it's not; Linné simply counted through the diversity of life from the species on upwards. Dysmorodrepanis 15:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Would others consider a standardized morphometrics infobox useful for the bird articles with tarsus, wing, length, tail, bill and weights with sections for races and subsections marking gender if required. Shyamal 06:30, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I've got a lot of good photos of common North American Midwestern US birds, and some others from Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Ecuador, which I'm happy to submit to Wikipedia for free use since my focus is education and conservation. I noticed last week that the Wikipedia photo for the Le Conte's Sparrow entry is pretty grainy and distant, without a larger photo available. I submitted LESP-Erickson, and don't know how, or if, to add it or substitute it on the Le Conte's Sparrow page. Suggestions? Also, I'm not very knowledgeable about technical matters, so if my photos like this one might be useful, I'd need some step-by-step instructions for what to do. (I hope this is the right place to ask this.) Laura Erickson 14:12, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
I've just added List of years in birding and ornithology to the "pages requested" section. Please see the few existing pages for layout. Thank you.
Also, I suggest that year links in birding articles link to one of the above, and not the general year, as happens in other genres - so 2005 not 2005
I decided this picture might be identifiable. Anyone care to take a shot? Sweetwaters Game Reserve, central Kenya, I think it was savanna habitat.
Also, User:JMK has been correcting some of my identifications of African birds. The discussion is at his Commons talk page. The ones he was least sure of, so I'd like someone to review them, are below
— JerryFriedman 02:40, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Anyone know the source of Ammamanopsis on the list of bird genera? There's nothing like that in Wikipedia, Zoonomen, the IUCN, or Avibase.
Also, the reason Euodice and Spermestes are on the list of redlinked bird genera is that we merge them into Lonchura. Any reason we shouldn't just delete them from the list? — JerryFriedman 22:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
two new images have been added to this page, which don't look like Accipiter hawks to me, more like Buteo species. can anyone make a positive ID and move them to the correct page(s). Jimfbleak 05:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Just a heads up that photographers are becoming entrenched - here anyone want to intervene/suggest a way forward? also any thoughts on the hawk item above Jimfbleak 17:32, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Professional attention required, I think.
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Vendée (region of France) references a historical royalist faction called the
Chouans (screech owls). (So naturally I wanted to link this.)
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Screech owl says
The term screech owl can mean:
The barn owl, the primary British meaning of the term (from its discordant cry which is supposed to be an evil omen)
Any of various small American owls of the genus Otus, allied to the Scops owls – especially the Eastern Screech Owl of North America
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Barn owl (Tyto alba) makes no mention of these birds ever being called "screech owls".
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Otus redirects to
Scops owl.
Scops owl says "Scops owls belong to the genus Otus of owls", and lists several dozen species. Does this mean that "Scops owls belong to Otus, and there are other species of Otus as well", or does it mean that the terms "Scops owl" and "Otus" are synonymous?
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Eastern Screech Owl gives the genus and species as Megascops asio, in contradiction to
Screech owl, which says that they are Otus. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
201.19.11.75 (
talk) 15:27, August 28, 2007 (UTC)
The current
WikiProject Birds collaboration article is
Preening (bird). The previous collaboration was: Tinamou. Feel free to cast your vote for next month's article |
I posted a to-do list on the talk page. I have also cleared out old nominations from the collaboration of the month page (that hadn't gotten any votes lately), so we can nominate some new articles. Sabine's Sunbird talk 21:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I found this spectacular image on Flickr to illustrate the concept of clay licks, but I don't have a birds of Ecuador book handy. There are clearly three kinds of parrot present, a macaw, an amazon and a smaller parakeet. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
It's an Amazon parrot - but what species? Anyone know? Thanks very much. -- Kurt Shaped Box 19:09, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I just noticed that the WikiProject Birds/Article requests/Species include requests for a range of species from the P. picta complex. Being fairly new to wiki, just a two questions before I start pages on these:
1) Any standardized taxonomy here on wiki or do people just follow whatever they find most appropriate in the specific cases? The split of the P. picta complex, as initially proposed (for ref. see Joseph, L., 2002, on Pyrrhura page), is widely disregarded by Neotropical Ornithologists, as there really were too many loose ends. This has been somewhat dealt with by Ribas et al., 2006 (again see Pyrrhura for full ref.), which doesn't solve the matter entirely, but still manage better than the earlier "lets split everything" approach. Before just editing away and following the specific taxonomy I prefer, I'd rather ask what others think:
2) If following the second or third approach as described above, what to do about Pyrrhura roseifrons? Only a single English name has ever been attributed to this taxon: Red-crowned Parakeet. Unfortunately this name is currently used for the Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae article (a species which, in its native range, widely is referred to as the Red-crowned Parakeet). Perhaps moving C. novaezelandiae to the Red-fronted Parakeet would be the best approach (this name already redirects to the C. novaezelandiae article), as this is the name used by the major World lists which recognize it as a distinct species (Clements, Gill & Wright and Howard & Moore). This would leave Red-crowned Parakeet available for the P. roseifrons article. Any input on this and the earlier matter would be appreciated. Rabo3 22:09, 3 September 2007 (UTC)