Wikipedia:Peer review/Greater Crested Tern/archive1

Greater Crested Tern

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for July 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it's passed GA and I'd welcome feedback before FAC. GA assessor said lead was too long so I've reduced to three para (article length = 30,000)

Thanks, jimfbleak (talk) 07:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Review by Sabine's Sunbird

I've made a few edits, and now some general points.

• I'm not sure why a general description of the morphology of terns is placed at the start of the taxonomy section. It might be better to discuss the placement of the terns in relation to gulls, skimmers and skuas.
• The Greater Crested Tern was originally described as Sterna bergii by Martin Lichtenstein in 1823, but was moved to its current genus Thalasseus (Boie, 1822) following mitochondrial DNA studies ... This is going to confuse the hell out of lay people. The placement of the date after the genus name makes sense if you know that genera were commonly erected, abandoned and then resurrected when genera get split down the line. If you don't know that it would seem that the move happened on that date, which will really confuse people who know that DNA wasn't discovered until 19something or other. I suggest rewording it, or at least making it clear when lumping and splitting happened in the past.
• An early Pliocene fossil bone fragment from the northeastern United States closely resembles a modern Royal Tern. It may be an unexpectedly early (3.7–4.8 million years before present) specimen of that species, or an ancestral member of the crested tern group.[7] - relevant to the genus article perhaps, but it seems slightly out of place in this article.
• The young terns fledge after 3 to 40 days - missing number I think
• When terns nest, it takes a while for the pair to become established. The male initially pecks at any bird entering his territory, and will repel any intruding male. Once a bond with a female has been established, a bit clumsy, it could perhaps explain a bit about pair formation, and also what happens to territoriality after pair formation.

I'll take another look soon. Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:27, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for comments, I'll follow them up later. jimfbleak (talk) 05:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Followed up, mostly straightforward I think - I didn't want too much in the taxonomy order-family-genus bit because there's so much uncertainty above genus level. jimfbleak (talk) 06:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Pair formation in the species is much clearer now. I'll have another comb over tomorrow. Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:11, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there is a discrepancy between the map and text. The species is described as a vagrant to the Cook Islands, but the map shows the species occurring over pretty much all of Polynesia in the winter (which would include the Cooks). The description of the wintering range across the Pacific is actually pretty vague, I've seen the species in Fiji myself. If you don't have book on the range in the Pacific I may be able to help, btw. Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:18, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

What's there is pretty well all I've got - I could just chop the Cook Islands from the vagrancy bit, but if you can improve the range, that's great> jimfbleak (talk) 07:41, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

One of the advantages of a New Zealand university (and God alone knows there aren't as many as I'd like) is a reasonable collection of works on Pacific birds. I'll check it out tomorrow. Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:46, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I followed it up (sorry for the delay, was sick on Friday and didn't visit the library. Pratt et al does indeed have the species as a vagrant in the Cooks. It does however breed on a number Pacific islands; which flat out contradicts the map and is simply omitted from the text. There is no one place that really describes the full extent of the species, I think distribution and habitat needs to be expanded a bit. I have added the info on the Pacific range and cited it (using your preferred templates no less!). Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:16, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Hope you're better, you must have been poorly to succumb to cititis (: I thought at the time that vagrancy ony to the Cook Islands seems odd, but it's clearer now. jimfbleak (talk) 05:53, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

• Unindent - The article formatting is terrible on my large screened home computer - the cladogram pushes the subspecies table off the page and under the taxobox. It is utterly unreadable. I am also wondering a bit about structure, I feel perhaps the description of the differences between teh subspecies might not be better in the text, or at least mentioned (like see table for differences).
• I will search for more precise info on distribution at work and add it, at present it is too light. But you need to fix the map to reflect the breeding distribution in the Pacific.
• It might be worth mentioning that their colonies are often multi species in the first paragraph of the breeding section.
• Overall I like it. I will search and add some stuff, I should be able to find out some info from HANZAB on the range, site fidelity (if at all) colonial fidelity (pretty common in seabirds) incubation stint length, exploitation (likely) and some other titbits that should bulk it up just a bit. But it should be good to go soon. Sabine's Sunbird talk 06:41, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

• You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC. The sourcing looks good.

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 13:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)