Talk:Mockingbird/Archive 1

Archive 1

vandalism

I just saw that virtually the entire article was replaced with "eat sh*t motherf**kers" and the S word repeated several dozen times. I removed it. Could someone who is more familiar with the site please replace whatever the original article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by An-Alteran (talk • contribs) 23:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Done: all the earlier revisions are available in the article history. - Jredmond (talk) 23:05, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be a number of revisions that make no sense. Why is Disneyland and mouse and Chicago mentioned randomly? 70.108.133.93 (talk) 20:47, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

please clarify

This is a very interesting comment, but I don't know what it means:

"Mockingbirds also have a reputation of being fierce defenders of 17 species in three genera."

Given that the passage is also discussing complications of their categorization, I can't help but wonder if the "17 species in 3 genera" applies to mockingbirds themselves. On the other hand, if they have a tendency to "defend" other species, that would be very interesting to clarify independently.

In fact, I'm especially confused about this "defending", because I was wondering if they were brood-parasitic and if that had anything to do with their song imitation. However, further research has not turned up any such connection, nor any hint that they are ever parasitic, except for the interesting questions about vampirism below.

(Potamites (talk) 21:52, 18 March 2008 (UTC))

next comment

by:KEMANI REID

Mockingbirds have been reported to arrive at the entrance of a blue bird house and when the newborns rise to be fed, the mockingbird takes them away. Do you have any information on this?

I have heard of 'vampire mockingbirds' that inhabit the Galapagos islands. Apparently some species have taken to drinking blood as an adaptation. I recall the species

Mockingbirds have been reported to arrive at the entrance of a blue bird house and when the newborns rise to be fed, the mockingbird takes them away. Do you have any information on this?

I have heard of 'vampire mockingbirds' that inhabit the Galapagos islands. Apparently some species have taken to drinking blood as an adaptation. I recall the species mentioned was the Española Mockingbird.

This article was removed from Category:Songbirds, so at first I thought "songbird" must have some specific technical meaning other than "a bird that sings", but the mockingbird is even listed at Songbird. What's up with that? It is a songbird, but the agreed system for categorising birds is to list only the lowest relevant taxon, since, eg Mimidae would be a subcat of songbird (or preferably passerine) anyway. I've now emptied the category and deleted it. Incidentally, songbird does have a technical meaning (see the article) - many American passerines are not songbirds (eg the antbirds and tyrant flycatchers.

EVERYTHING about mocking birds.

Mocking birds are non-migrating, year around residents of all areas of the usa, mexico, Cuba, etc. they most likely inhabit suburbs, grassy lawns, and forest edges, but can be found almost anywhere. Mocking Birds need open grassy areas for eating, shrubs for hiding the nest, and trees to sing in.Mockingbirds are slender birds with light gray above and pale below and with white wing patches and outer tail feathers. The wings are long and the tail is short. Mockingbirds have black legs and yellow eyes.The Mocking Bird is the chief of “singers”, in addition to their remarkable powers of imitation, he is able to sing many notes in the performance of the Mocker that is his own, and which has made him the best imaitator of vocal melodies. The mocking bird's songs are just imitating the notes of all the birds,the other things in the forest and the things around it broken into fragments. Then put into one song. Their are usually four to six, bluish green, eggs with small dots that are a shade of brown. I think this refers to Northern Mockingbird. mentioned was the Española Mockingbird.

This article was removed from Category:Songbirds, so at first I thought "songbird" must have some specific technical meaning other than "a bird that sings", but the mockingbird is even listed at Songbird. What's up with that? It is a songbird, but the agreed system for categorising birds is to list only the lowest relevant taxon, since, eg Mimidae would be a subcat of songbird (or preferably passerine) anyway. I've now emptied the category and deleted it. Incidentally, songbird does have a technical meaning (see the article) - many American passerines are not songbirds (eg the antbirds and tyrant flycatchers.

EVERYTHING about mocking birds.

Mocking birds are non-migrating, year around residents of all areas of the usa, mexico, Cuba, etc. they most likely inhabit suburbs, grassy lawns, and forest edges, but can be found almost anywhere. Mocking Birds need open grassy areas for eating, shrubs for hiding the nest, and trees to sing in. Mockingbirds are slender birds with light gray above and pale below and with white wing patches and outer tail feathers. The wings are long and the tail is short. Mockingbirds have black legs and yellow eyes. The Mocking Bird is the chief of “singers”, in addition to their remarkable powers of imitation, he is able to sing many notes in the performance of the Mocker that is his own, and which has made him the best imaitator of vocal melodies. The mocking bird's songs are just imitating the notes of all the birds,the other things in the forest and the things around it broken into fragments. Then put into one song. Their are usually four to six, bluish green, eggs with small dots that are a shade of brown. I think this refers to Northern Mockingbird.

can I shoot this anoying bird? it sings all night and is driving me nuts! I am pretty sure I will shoot it. soon......why does it sing at night?24.10.80.27 08:03, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

How do u get rid of one that is protecting it's nest and attacking everyone?

To Kill a Mockingbird

Should we also include this in the article?-- Vintei  talk  01:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

(Potamites (talk) 21:55, 18 March 2008 (UTC)) my personal opinion is that a mention of the book might be warranted, but encyclopedia entries for species aren't really the place to look for pest control tips for that species. hopefully there are other places on the net that one can find tips on removing animals. i hope that here the focus can be on the scientific properties of the animals.

Ha ha! Good one! ButteredToast (talk) 10:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

maybe a section: "Mockingbirds in Pop Culture"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.35.188.240 (talk) 00:19, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I too am ready to just shoot the darn thing. It makes quite a racket all night long and it's very annoying, keeping me awake for hours! I don't know what's worse, my husband's snoring or this pesky noisy mockingbird! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.128.23 (talk) 06:10, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Note that article for the Northern Mockingbird mentions the cultural reference and Harper Lee's novel and imho that is the appropriate place for it rather than here. However maybe this article should include a direct link to the Northern Mockingbird as the best known species of the group.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:43, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

69.27.252.252

Please be aware this IP address, http:\\69.27.252.252, has caused vandalism to both this article and to the Gliese 581 c Article recently.

mockingbird

I found a mockingbird two days ago and today when I work up it was ded. It was a baby. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.123.236.244 (talk) 13:01, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

If it already had feathers on it, you should have left it outside unless you have a dog or there are lot's of cats in the neighborhood. tons of baby birds die because people find them and think that they're in danger of dying when in reality the mother is still feeding and taking care of it. Michael1115 (talk) 14:33, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Weasel

The intro to this article is littered with weasel words. Phrases need to be solid and factual. The following are the phrases in which weasel words are used (WW have been highlighted):

• There are about 17 species in three genera.
• These do not appear to form a monophyletic lineage...
• Mimus and Nesomimus are quite closely related...
• their closest living relatives appear to be some thrashers
• it seems to represent a very ancient basal lineage of Mimidae.

These comprise all but one sentence of the introduction. I have no knowledge of these birds (which is why I came to this article in the first place) and so I cannot fix this myself. If anyone more knowledgeable about these birds can remove all instances of weasel words, that would be great. Thanks! --13² 19:27, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

removed the weasel tags, since imho it does really apply here. Though strictly speaking the quoted examples can be seen as weasel when taken out of context, they are not really weasel words within the context of the article. For this see the Improving weasel-worded statements and Exceptions sections of the weasel words guideline and note that the sentences in questions have footnotes validating their claims. Also the use of possibly "weasely" sounding qualifiers is often unavoidable when describing scientific results that still carry a certain amount of uncertainty or in the case of incomplete knowledge in general.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

State Bird

Shouldn't this article include that the mockingbird is the state bird of Texas? I have seen this included in other bird articles. 69.149.40.209 (talk) 16:37, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes also the note regarding harper Lee's novel could be here, however it should point to the northern mocking bird article for further details.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The Northern Mockingbird article is much better and does include all this. I wonder if a merge or more prominent note of this page would be wise. As is, as a reader I'm confused as to the purpose of the two separate pages and it really impeded me finding the information I was looking for. 0¹⁸ (talk) 01:52, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

The merging of those pages makes no sense to me, since it is common practice for biology articles, that various species get their own article. This article is merely supposed to provide an overview over which species are called mocking birds and what common features they might have and imho it should contain some info about various cultural connections as well. If a lot of people use mocking bird as a short for the northern mocking bird we could consider creating a disambiguation page for mocking bird, where one entry leads to this overview, while the other leads directly to the species northern mockingbird.--Kmhkmh (talk) 07:28, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I've added a species list to make it clear that this is about all the mockingbirds, not just the US one Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:14, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused, if you don't know that the US species is called the northern mockingbird (as the commenter didn't) how does this help? 0¹⁸ (talk) 14:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Kmhkmh, I'm not arguing that this is unusual for Wikipedia, just that it made it very difficult for me to find what I was looking for and even know that it was there to find. Similarly, the previous commenter must have had the same problem. I'm also not sure how either suggested improvement would help. The organization is poor in the sense of a reader who is not a biologist trying to find information on mockingbirds. I do acknowledge that you are right that it makes lots of sense from the perspective of using an existing taxonomy. But what is Wikipedia about? Which goal is more important? 0¹⁸ (talk) 14:15, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

At least Northern Mockingbird is on the page now! I don't really see what else can be done, although several in the list rule themselves out as likely US birds because they have a country in the species name. It's always possible to check List of North American birds for which mockingbird it is too. What you can't do is add "the one in the US is Northern Mockingbird", because that would be very parochial unless you were prepared to add the ranges of all the other species. Although I've seen Northern, Tropical (stole my cake in Tobago), and Chalk-browed, as a Brit I don't really feel inclined to go through all the species accounts to copy their ranges to this article. It's a problem because in countries where only one of a kind occurs, the name becomes truncated — your mockingbird, our Swallow (= Barn Swallow), and Robin doesn't lead to our (Eurasian) Robin or your (American) Robin. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Well i don't think it is good idea to deviate from the taxonomy, which will cause trouble in various ways and with other editors. Moreover it might also cause that things are harder to find. In any case the disorientation of a reader with no biology background can be helped by the disambiguation case and that the overview article links to other articles. Right now with the disambiguation reference on the top, I don't find it particularly difficult to find the other uses/references of mocking bird. True, if you just want to look up Harper Lee's novel or the state bird, then it would be little faster, if this article contains the information or rather links there directly. However this term is also looked up by people for other reasons and for them a different structure would be disadvantage. Also I'd say people using WP more often should be aware of the function of disambiguation pages and overview articles, so personally i don't see any real problem here.--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:05, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused, are you denying that this structure made it difficult for me and another editor to (a) find what we were looking for and (b) even know that it existed in Wikipedia? 0¹⁸ (talk) 01:50, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

yes as in denying (a) and (b), (not for you in particular but for others) and in addition i fully agree wuth Jimfbleak's comment.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:10, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, help me out then, why was our experience unusual? What should we have done? 0¹⁸ (talk) 14:50, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, let me try another approach. There appear to be three or four species that have large articles. I'm going to guess this is where most of the interest is because it has the most editors writing. Why not (1) make clear that this page regards the family and not the species, (2) highlight the those species with more extensive articles, (3) Link to the more extensively written articles on the mockingbird DAB page. 0¹⁸ (talk) 14:59, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm really not sure what your difficulty/confusion is here. You seem to read the article rather differently from me. From my perspective the article essentially does all that, what you ask for already.

• (1) the article first sentence states directly that this is not about a species but about a collective term for agroup of birds. Mockingbirds are a group of New World passerine birds from the Mimidae family.
• (2) The article already provides links to the individual species with WP entries. And prioritizing/editorializing that list for the "most extensive articles" makes little sense, since you don't know which bird ap particular reader wants to look up and since species articles change over time. A reader looking for particular bird is not going to look at another one just because it has a more extensive article. If the list in this article contains editorial comments, then changing/extending a species article would require to change this article as well, which is creating unnecessary maintainance issues. Improving/extending species articles should not require changes in summary/overview articles.
• (3) for redundancy/maintainance reasons it makes more sense to keep the species list here rather than on the DAB page. First of all readers arrive on this page first anyhow, so sending them on an additional trip to the DAB page, just so see the species list, makes no sense. The DAB page should only contain those mocking bird species for which in colloquial or local language the term "mocking bird" is used to refer to aparticular species - like in the case of the northern mocking bird (see also Jimfbleak's comment).

--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:53, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Let me be clearer

• (1) For some reason there is a feeling that information on northern mockingbird should not be kept here. I don't really understand why something like today's Jimfbleak edit where he deleted cited material because, "wrong page." I don't get why something appears here as opposed to the species page. I would think noting that there might be lots of information on a species page is useful.
• (2&3) I really don't understand your contention that, "you don't know which bird ap (sic) particular reader wants to look up." Sure I do [1]. Mockingbird was viewed 26k times, the species 13k times, 60% of those where views of northern mocker. This alone suggests it deserves its own well placed link (indicating that there is more there). I also don't see a problem with featuring pages that editors have put more time in like Galápagos Mockingbird, Socorro Mockingbird, Hood Mockingbird, and Tropical Mockingbird. Why not have sections on all of these? 0¹⁸ (talk) 17:48, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Re the deletion, it clearly was the wrong page. To leave it here would suggest that all the mockingbird species had been studied and shown this behaviour, whereas it's clear that the ref is just for Northern Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:58, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused, why didn't you move it there then? 0¹⁸ (talk) 18:55, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

There is an obvious reason, why information specific to the northern mocking bird doesn't really belong on this page, because this page is not about the northern mocking. What's so hard to understand there?

Regarding your 2nd point, you don't know which mocking bird a particular reader wants to look up. The statistic you quote tells you nothing about a particular reader, it merely tells you that currently most readers are primarily interested in northern mocking bird. To me it makes no sense at all to throw the logical structure of articles overboard just to save a few thousand readers one additional click.

And yes there is a problem with editorializing/featuring WP articles within WP articles, since it is not a common practice, creates maintenance issues (as mention above) and potentially NPOV/POV issues as well.

We don't need section in this article for all those mocking bird species, because we link to their species articles anyway.

--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:30, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I thought the idea was to help people find information. The basic premise of what I am saying is that I (and I presume many others, see Jimfbleak's comment above) didn't know which mocking bird I was looking for. Jimfbleak suggested I could look for birds in the USA/canada article, but there isn't a link to that. Why not help people out? I mean it is even worse than that, I didn't even know I was on the wrong page. Nothing on this page tells me that unless I already know that parts families are not species and have information about particular species removed from there because it doesn't belong.

On the topic of including more prominent information for articles that are well developed. It happens all the time, there is "main article" links, and just the fact of having a longer article represents POV if you want to go down that path and is inevitable. 0¹⁸ (talk) 18:55, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Again people do find the information with the current structure (depending on what they are looking for an additional click might be required) and they are helped out by the current structure. Yet again the introduction clearly tells that is article is not about a species (it is in the very first sentence and you don't need any biological knowledge to understand the word group - being able to read plain English suffices completely).

It is correct however that overview articles could provide short summaries of their subtopics having their own articles. This is indeed somewhat common in WP in general, but afaik not so common in biology articles and imho usually not desirable for them. In any case the part that Jimfbleak deleted did not match such an approach. If you want something like that, then you need to provide actual short summaries of all or the most of the species articles and not not just an arbitrary bit of information. If there's an editorial for such short summary chapters, I won't object to it though personally i see no need for them--Kmhkmh (talk) 19:19, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Here is what I am tyring to say: Imagine arriving at this site looking for, say, the bird called "Mockingbird" in your area. You see there is an article here about mockingbirds (as a group) and you think you have the Wikipedia article on the topic. If you know that biology articles have lots of information on the species pages AND which species you are interested in (like you do), then you would probably click on. Otherwise, it sure would be nice if there was some note of this. Possibilities include writing short summaries for some of the birds taken from, especially those that people are more likely to be interested in (the longer articles and the more clicked on articles). I would argue that since such a large people click on "northern mockingbird" it deserves a hatnote. I've added what I would suggest. 0¹⁸ (talk) 20:42, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

No, for the 3rd (and last) time you don't need any biology knowledge at all but just plain English. From the very first line you know the term is applied to a group of birds and then you use the list to get to the various birds or the bird in your area. Readers not understanding/recognizing this either did not read the very first line for whatever reasons or they can't even understand plain English. The latter case is beyond the scope of en.WP.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Not sure how group helps. A species is a group. Three birds in a room is a group. I also don't understand how a reader would even know that there was such a thing as a list of birds in their area. 0¹⁸ (talk) 17:00, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I give up. You seem to have a way processing sentences that's beyond me. The use of the term group in the first sentence is rather clear, so is the list in the article. Your argument or objection makes no sense at all and I'm afraid this discussion turns into a discussion for the discussion's sake.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

/* Darwin and mockingbirds */

I removed the end line about Darwin having gone home and then learned about Darwin finches. Obviously, the finches were named after HIM, so the idea that he went home and learned about them seems quite silly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.95.139.189 (talk) 13:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

It was unsourced and probably offtopic here, but the idea he went home and learnt about the finches is accurate. See Sulloway, Frank J. (1982), "Darwin and His Finches: The Evolution of a Legend" (pdf), Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 1–53, doi:10.1007/BF00132004, or for a concise summary see Darwin's finches#Darwin's theory. The nickname "Darwin's finches" came long afterwards. . . dave souza, talk 18:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

File:Mimus polyglottos1.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Mimus polyglottos1.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests August 2011 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 23:06, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Common mockingbirds in North America

Why are the common mockingbirds of North America, in particular, worthy of inclusion when there's no mention of which species of mockingbirds are common to the other continents of our planet? Sadly I'm no ornithologist so I can't update authoratively, but if someone is and could flesh this out it would surely be an improvement as the other mockingbird species are presumably of equal significance? (well either that or the mention of common mockingbirds being the only mockingbird common to North America shouldn't be included here since it's detailed immediately on the species specific page anyway) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.37.175.166 (talk) 00:06, 30 March 2016 (UTC)