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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose 10:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Bohemian Waxwing

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Bohemian Waxwing (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Nominator(s): Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:43, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Despite its Bohemian name, this waxwing gets drunk rather than indulging in wacky baccy. It may bring the bubonic plague, but it's a beautiful bird, familiar on rowans in deepest winter if you live far enough north.

I am indebted to Aa77zz for commenting on and improving the text prior to nomination, for finding sources I had missed, and for trashing the OED's claims of earliest use. All remaining errors and omissions are mine alone. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:43, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support I was involved with an informal peer review mentioned by Jim above and believe that the article fully meets the FA criteria. The article is comprehensive, well organised, and clearly written in good English. The text has appropriate citations and the sources are reliable and consistently formatted. The pictures all appear to have appropriate licences as does the sound file. Also, the map is based on a suitably licensed source. I have a comment that doesn't affect my support:

  • Thanks for support. In the text it says that juveniles do have a few red tips, but I omitted to say any thing about moult, now added a sentence. I've said that it's only in the third year that Cedar Waxwings have lots of red tips; it's likely that that is the case for the larger species, but nobody seems to have done the research, so I can't actually say that Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:26, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from Curly Turkey

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Feel free to disagree with any of the following—I'm not always unreasonable. I don't know anything about birds or animals, so don't be surprised if some of the following is gibberish:

  • the taxobox could image could use an "|image_alt=", and the other images could use alt text per WP:ALT
  • sometimes conversions are done with {{convert}}, sometimes by hand. I don't think it's actually an issue, but consistency would be nice.
  • "a [[Common Starling|starling-sized]] [[passerine]]": I'd go with "a [[Common Starling|starling]]-sized [[passerine]]", so as not to create the impression there's a "starling-sized" article, and to break up the links (it looks like "starling-sized passerine" is one article until you hover over it)
  • "Females are similar to males, but young birds are less well-marked": "but" implies a contrast. If the females are similar to the males whether they are young or mature, then what's the contrast?
  • "large numbers of Bohemian Waxwings erupt": should this be "irrupt", as in the map caption?
  • "The genus name Bombycilla comes from the Greek bombux, silk and the Modern Latin cilla, tail ... of the German Seidenschwanz, silk-tail": I'd put "silk", "tail", and "silk-tail" in quotes, to distiguish signifier from signified.
  • "with a 32–35.5 cm (12.6–14 in) wingspan. and an": that period should be a comma
  • "mainly brownish grey,": not sure, but isn't "brownish grey" hyphenated?
  • "The red waxy tips are modified feather shafts": "modified", as in deliberately?
  • "A study of Cedar Waxwings shows that in that related species": is that one "that" too many? If not, could this be reworded so it doesn't appear to be a typo?
  • "The range of the Bohemian Waxwing": was there meant to be a line break here?
  • "The Cedar Waxwing is smaller than Bohemian": should that be "the Bohemian"?
  • "is just short of the treeline": worth linking "Tree line"
  • "this waxwing irrupts south of its normal wintering areas, sometimes in huge numbers. The fruit on which they depend": starts singular ("this waxwing"), and then goes plural ("they depend") for the rest of the paragraph
  • "They will then stay until the food runs out and then move on again.": I'd drop both "then"s
  • "largest ever eruption": again, is this not "irruption"?
  • "wet areas such as lakes, peat swamps with dead and drowned trees": I think that should be "lakes and"
  • "35·6 birds per square kilometre": should that not be a "." rather than a "·" in ""35·6"?
  • "the commonest prey": there are those who frown on "commonest"; others insist it is only used when "common" refers to "uncultured, dirty, lower-class", rather than "plentiful"
  • "They can ... than a human": if the bird is plural, than shouldn't the animal it's being compared to be plural as well?
  • "12.8 million km<sup>2</sup> (4.9 million mi<sup>2</sup>)": I think it would be better semantically to use ² (unicode U+00B2) rather than cosmetically superscripting "2"
WP:MOS has "Write powers of unit symbols with HTML, e.g. 5 km<sup>2</sup> not Unicode superscripts and subscripts." Unicode symbols are very small. Aa77zz (talk) 08:52, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're right, it looks like the Unicode standard itself recommends against using the superscript characters. That's gonna bug me forever. Curly Turkey (gobble) 10:22, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "this species' population now appears to be declining": probably want an "as of" there.
    Done Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:30, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "{{Reflist|2}}": personal preference—not a fan of hard-coded number of columns, as they can can force a column offscreen on particularly small screens, or result in tons of whitespace on particularly large screens. I'd love to convince everyone to use "|colwidth=".
  • I've no objection, but I have no idea what follows the = sign. Feel free to change as you wish Jimfbleak - talk to me?
    • Like I said, it's a personal preference and not rquired. If you do, though, you'd pick a width that comfortably fits your reference style—for instance, I find with a short reference style that "20em" looks nice. Curly Turkey (gobble) 08:16, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • a {{Portal|Birds}} would be nice.

———Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:06, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose. Curly Turkey (gobble) 08:16, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for support, I've settled on 30em since I only use short form for books, and 20 makes journals and websites too cramped for my tastes Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:52, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Casliber

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Looking through now.....queries below: Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:20, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although the Bohemian Waxwing's range overlaps those of the Cedar and Japanese Waxwings, it is easily distinguished from other waxwings by size and plumage differences. - would use "them" instead of "other waxwings" as repetitive
I'd link irruption, maybe to wiktionary
The waxwings are short-tailed stocky birds with soft plumage, a head crest and distinctively patterned wings and tails. The family contains three species, the Bohemian, Cedar, and Japanese Waxwings. - hmm, bit stilted. I think I'd rephrase as:

The waxwings are a family of short-tailed stocky birds with soft plumage, a head crest and distinctively patterned wings and tails. There are three species, the Bohemian, Cedar, and Japanese Waxwings.

I'd also use the word Bombycillidae earlier in the para - looks odd using it so late.

Support (moral or otherwise as wikiproject birds member..) Otherwise looking on-track. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:38, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

  • Is Vieillot 1807 or 1808?
  • Gesner or Gessner?
  • FN12: page formatting
  • FN13: short cite style doesn't make sense with what you've got under Cited texts, but then "OED" isn't an author anyways. Also, that entry isn't from the 2002 edition, it's dated 1926
  • FN16: title should use endash
  • FN24: why is date italicized?
  • FN26: author formatting

Note -- image review? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:14, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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Thanks for image review, Nikkimari. I've added the full stop, removed the first authorlink in File:Bombycilla_garrulusII.jpg (the second, to his website, is OK). The third comment has me baffled. There is no image with a name even similar to that in the article, and the source links appear to work for those images that have them. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:46, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I've found it in the link at the bottom, I can't fix it, so I've removed the link for now, will discuss at project. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:52, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have fixed the link on Commons. Snowman (talk) 11:49, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support...just ran citation bot and I have nothing to add to the above comments. I did see the word irrupt followed later by irruption which is new to me...thought it was a spelling error but if course it isn't. Nice job on the article and it covers all the bases. I see Cedar Waxwings in Nebraska in the spring but have never seen a Bohemian Waxwing.--MONGO 14:31, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for support. It looks as if they occur there. but I've no idea how common they may be. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:32, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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