Talk:Goldcrest/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Stemonitis (talk) 12:50, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have a look at this article and suggest a few improvements along the way. It looks to be in pretty good shape, so expect my comments to be quite nit-picky. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:50, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Description

Gloss "jinking" and "supercilium"

replaced with occasional sudden changes of direction. Added (eyebrow)

Voice

I think "cedarcedar-cedar-cedar-cedar-stichi-see-pee" probably needs a direct inline citation; it must be a quote from somewhere.

repeated the Simms ref immediately after cedar...

"The dialects on the Azores fell into two main groups, neither of which elicited a response from male European Goldcrests in playback experiments." This sentence is the only one in this section in the past tense; it should be in the present.

Fixed

Taxonomy

"[D]espite superficial similarities, the crests are taxonomically remote from the warblers." The term "the crests" has not been introduced before and seems colloquial. I would suggest replacing it with "kinglets", "Regulidae" or "they". The usage recurs in "Distribution and habitat" and should be altered there, too.

Replaced with they and kinglets respectively

The punctuation in the list of subspecies is a little erratic. The authorities of the trinomina are followed with a comma, a colon or a space, in different cases. In any case, I think the descriptive text could be better separated from the authorities, perhaps with a dash.

I'm not keen on dashes, but I have standardised with full stops after authority, and made the rest more sentence-like

[Alternatively,] The text for R. r. himalayensis does not end with a full stop, as the others do, but since they're all sentence fragments, probably none of them should have a full stop. I think it would improve the article to convert these into full sentences, but I won't insist upon it.

as above

"Recent studies..." – it's better to say when they were published; this text might stand for decades.

A 2006 study...

Distribution and habitat

"... as the first cold weather arrives". Is it possible to get a definition of "cold weather" in this context?

Its all the source says, presumably at or near freezing, but don't know

Behaviour

"In very hot weather, the female has been noted as taking drops of water to her chicks in her bill." This sentence seems out of order; the chicks haven't hatched yet in the course of the narrative.

Good catch, now follows hatching!

"Eucosmid moths" is an inappropriate term; there is no family "Eucosmidae" on Wikipedia. It should be either "tortricid moths", or state "Eucosma" (which is where the link currently leads).

From the context I think its appropriate to link to the family, so now tortrix moths

In culture

One transliteration from the Greek doesn't seem to match: "βασιλικοεκς Basiliskos". Should it be "βασιλικος"?

I corrected the error in Common Firecrest, but forgot to do so here

I am also uncertain about the relevance of the image in this section. I note that there is an illustration of the legend available on the Commons, but it's not a brilliant image (the "eagle" resembles a seagull too much for my liking), so I would understand if you didn't want to use it. If another illustration could be found, that would be excellent.

I take your point, although it is a Suffolk fishing fleet. Feel free to remove if it's a stumbling block, but I'd rather have no image at all than the Commons one!

Miscellaneous

The sexual dimorphism in crest colour is mentioned a couple of times. Is it possible to compare them visually, even if it's just labelling existing images as "(male)" or "(female)"?

I've sexed all the captions, although unfortunately there is no good pic of the male equivalent to this Firecrest

I'll come back and see if anything else strikes me, but I'm sure it won't take much before this can be passed. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:50, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for careful review, please let me know if there is anything else amiss Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:24, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's excellent work, leaving only a couple of little things. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:02, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The remarkable claim that "there is a record of a Goldcrest attacking a large dragonfly in flight, only to be dragged along by the insect before releasing it unharmed" probably needs a direct inline citation, rather than just one at the end of the paragraph.

Done

There is inconsistent use of "irises" and "irides" as the plural of iris. I don't think it matters which is used, but it ought to be only one.

Good spot, settled for English rather than Greek Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:57, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that was all very painless. I am more than happy to pass this article now. The BirdLife link is playing up, but that may be a temporary issue; keep an eye on it. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:06, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, I'll give the Birdlife link 24 hours to see if it settles Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:31, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]