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Comments from Ucucha

[edit]

Resolved comments moved to talk:

  • The way species are linked and not linked throughout the article seems a bit confused. May I suggest linking on first occurrence and not linking on every further occurrence? I have tried and you're welcome to fix any I have missed. I had intended to do this but had forgotten to doublecheck. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks. Caught a few more. I assume it's intentional that they are still linked in the image captions?
Taxobox
Lead
  • What does "tuwah" mean?
lucky we checked that oneCasliber (talk · contribs) 14:04, 16 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Placement of the cockatoos as a separate family is fairly undisputed, although it is unresolved whether or not other living lineages of parrots (such as the lories and lorikeets) are as distinct as they appear." - rather vague
  • "White cockatoos are more commonly found than black cockatoos in captivity." - what are these? Color morphs, or distinct taxonomic groups? (good point which we need to correct - "White cockatoo" is a term used for the pale-plumaged group of Cacatua + Eolophus + Lophocroa, although the species '"cacatua alba which was commonly called the Umbrella Cockatoo is now (infuriatingly) the White Cockatoo. Will get Got a reference for this and added.)
  • Saw that one of the external links was mytoos.com. Is "too" a notable abbreviation of "cockatoo" that needs to be mentioned here? (no, just a domain name - the only diminuitve I know is "cocky" - never seen "too")
  • Some of the branches in the cladogram are rather short. What about using something like |label1=  to fix that?
  • I see that this has been magically fixed. Incidentally, I think that it would have been better to sign here after every point made, because the comments become separated when people make comments in-between the lines. Snowman (talk) 00:49, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I dropped the subspecies which were only there for one species for some reason. As for the signing, I'd mostly suggest Casliber place his comments on a separate line--the indentation should make clear who signed what and the general organization should make clear that every one-* comment is mine. Ucucha 20:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I had hoped that the statement in the lead about lories would be clarified here, but unfortunately not. Now I am quite curious and want something about that in the taxonomy section: why are cockatoos now considered a separate family? what are their relations to other psittaciform families? (actually the lory bit is not really germane to the article and serves to complicate more than enlighten. I am removing it)
    • I do think you should expand on these things. The classification within the family (internal) is covered rather well, but it should also cover the external classification in some more detail than what is there now. Ucucha 13:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have added "Subsequent molecular studies have reinforced placing cockatoos into a well-defined group or clade that diverged early in the evolution of parrots, splitting off before the remaining psittacines radiated across the southern hemisphere and diversified into the many types of macaws, lories, lovebirds and other parrots. Only the New Zealand parrots of the family Nestoridae are a more ancient offshoot" - to clarify where cockies are on the family tree of parrotoids - i.e. all the rest are more related to each other and the cockies split off early. I figured that depth was okay for this article (?) Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is "Grant J" a standard way to refer to this taxonomic authority? (there are lots of ingenious ways authors get their names abbreviated to, if there is more than one author of a given surname)
Morphology
  • "Like other parrots, cockatoos have short legs, strong claws, and walk with a waddle" - don't like this phrasing, but couldn't think of a suitable way to rewrite the sentence
  • "warning others of predators" and "as warnings when defending nests" - are those different things? If so, perhaps add what they are defending their nests against (fellow cockatoos?).
warning --> alerting (i.e. alerting other cockatoos) - for first, second is nonspecific Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OK then. Ucucha 01:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Distribution and habitat
  • "Interestingly, no cockatoo species are found in Borneo or many Pacific Islands," - that's pretty much expected for an Australasian group. Same distribution as for Nyctimene and Dobsonia. I'd be interested to know where their precise limits lie (the islands off northern Luzon? Palawan? the Sulu Islands? Sulawesi? Lombok? the Santa Cruz Islands?), but I suppose that's too much detail for this section. (not really, I added "despite their presence on nearby Palawan and Sulawesi," which is discussed in the source)
    • Palawan - that's somewhat surprising. No further problems for me, so I struck it.
Behavior
  • "The 21 species are generally highly social and will roost, forage and travel together" - reads like the species are socializing with each other, which I suppose is not what is meant.
I have tried "All species are generally highly social, and roost, forage and travel in colourful and noisy flocks." - as the size of flocks is specified in the next segment.
  • "All species require roosting sites that are sometimes located near drinking sites" - unclear. Do they have several roosting sites, at least some of which should be near drinking sites? (the 'sometimes' is spurious and removed. Water is a limiting factor)
  • "The Glossy Black Cockatoo specialises in the cones of trees of the genus Allocasuarina, often from a single species," - how exactly? Do individual GBCs only eat cones from one Allocasuarina species? (the species as a whole does. Thought that was clear. will think about a reword)
  • "engage in allopreening" - "preen each other", you mean? (I thought a bluelink was enough but it i easy to add a two word clarification and parentheses)
(my original intention was to keep the word to I guess educate folks on more jargon, but reading it again, I can easily lose it I guess)
That's also a good intention. You don't have to carry out every change I suggest when you think it's not a good one. ;-) Ucucha 13:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No no, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the word was unnecessary. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Plasmodium - might be better to say here that that's the malaria parasite (done)
  • ", a condition recognised in parrots" - does this add anything? I nearly struck it, but thought it might refer to formal recognition as a disease by some veterinarian body. (?..um, no)
Relationship with humans
  • Either the Cockatiel is on Appendix III, or the two parts about CITES contradict each other.
  • alt "A slender grey male Cockatiel with yellow and orange face perched on a horizontal wooden branch place high in a room" - would a non-specialist be expected to recognize it as a Cockatiel? (changed Cockatiel to "crested parrot-like bird")
  • "a cockatoo appeared recently" - when? (2008)
  • Temby ref is missing an accessdate. (added now. that is an odd citation template I might have to replace, once I figure out which one to replace it with...)
External links
Categories
  • Why only "Birds of Australia"? (good point. added some others. Could lose them all if we decide that these cats are for species only. Not fussed either way)
Another comment: I think this article needs a distribution map. I'd be willing to make one when you give me a detailed source for cockatoo distributions. Ucucha 13:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea. I will email one, but I need desperately to sleep now. Sometime tomorrow. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. I won't have much time over the next few days anyway. Ucucha 01:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

End of moved text - Ucucha 20:42, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • "rodents" - you can't get that past me without getting asked "which?" Surprised that there are no dasyuromorphians among the predators. (I find once one moves away from a specialty area, precision can get lost - i.e. in the case of bird authorities talking bout rodents, but will see what I can find)
    • I read in Menkhorst and Knight's Mammals of Australia that Uromys caudimaculatus will eat bird's eggs, and it does occur on Cape York. I found this paper that actually mentions Uromys eating Palm Cockatoo eggs. They refer to a paper by Murphy et al.: Murphy, S., Legge, S., and Heinsohn, R. (2003). The breeding biology of palm cockatoos (Probosciger aterrimus): a case of a slow life history. Journal of Zoology 261, 327–339. doi: 10.1017/S0952836903004175. Otherwise, Hydromys chrysogaster is said to eat birds, but that is a semiaquatic animal so I doubt it'll climb a tree to eat cockatoo eggs. The only other candidates appear to be Rattus species, but it looks like Australian Rattus mainly stick to eating plants and insects. In summary, I guess Uromys caudimaculatus is the only criminal here, and I'm willing to send you the J. Zool. paper when you don't have access to it yourself. Ucucha 01:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The ACT Government adopted the Gang-gang Cockatoo as its official faunal emblem on 27 February 1997." - popular culture? section header changed

And some more - Ucucha 20:52, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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