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Parulidae Reshuffle Proposal

As many of you surely know, the AOU adopted a new taxonomy for Parulidae last summer. IOC had since followed suit. (See http://www.worldbirdnames.org/n-finches.html ) I propose that we adopt their taxonomy, which, among other things, subsumes Dendroica into Setophaga. Natureguy1980 (talk) 19:59, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Have at it sir.........Pvmoutside (talk) 20:14, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
Wow...no more Dendroica ....have at it then. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:44, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
There being no objections, I will (slowly) start the move. If anyone wants to help, that would be cool. :-) Natureguy1980 (talk) 18:54, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
If anyone is interested in reading the paper that led to these changes, Professor Lovette (one of the authors) just responded to my email query by sending a PDF copy to me; I told him we were reworking the warbler articles and wanted to be able to explain the science behind the decisions. He also offered to help us get access to other scientific papers we might need (i.e. for other articles) through his various connections. A good ally! MeegsC | Talk 21:03, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Falconimorphae

Does anyone have any comment on the validity or utility of this recently created stub? Maias (talk) 01:13, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

No sources, just a definition, redirect at best Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:14, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
And given the latest studies pairing falcons with parrots and passerines, not likely to be revived....Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:28, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
It appears to be based on: "B. C. Livezey and R. L. Zusi. 2007. Higher-order phylogeny of modern birds (Theropoda, Aves: Neornithes) based on comparative anatomy. II. Analysis and discussion. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 149(1):1-95", which could be added as a source. However, the phylogeny {as the title of the paper says) is based on comparative anatomy rather than molecular data. If it is completely superseded, is it worthwhile keeping for historical reasons? Maias (talk) 00:02, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Birding info

I was thinking of doing a three-location trip early next year, and I would welcome any info either here or on my email to help me plan.

  1. Hongkong is favourite for the outward stop, for the far eastern residents and wintering Sibes
  2. Australia. We have been to Queensland, so we wondered if Perth would be a good staring point for a couple of weeks birding in a different area? Any info/websites/alternative suggestion welcome.
  3. I'd initially thought of Bali, but not sure that it will justify the expense in terms of new birds, since we have been to Singapore and southernmost Malayasia. Any other suggestion suggestions (we've been to Thailand and NZ)? Is PNG possible at a sensible cost, since we will be in Oz anyway?

Thanks for any suggestions, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:45, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I think will might need several vaccinations to visit some of those places, so why not stay in the UK and visit the zoos in Bristol, Chester, and London? If you are going to travel far, are there any zoos to visit along the way. You should be able to photograph some rare birds including parrots in zoos. Snowman (talk) 08:41, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Depends on time of year - summer would be great for Tasmania, winter better for Northern Territory, NW WA (Broome) or north Queensland......I saw an advertisement for a resort in Irian Jaya which I was mightily intrigued by......or you could drop by Sydney too :))) Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:23, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Snowman, I've had most of the jabs from previous travels, just malaria might be necessary, although we didn't need it on our last tropical jaunt. Our interest is in wild birds, and we are more likely to visit biological gardens (which often have tame birds) than zoos. We are also useless photographers, although we did get pics of Lesser Nighthawk and Island Scrub Jay. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:55, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Cas, I think that WA is the best bet, since more likely to give us a different species range from Central Queensland. Why Broome ? (I've done no research yet, since we still have to go to Vancouver later this summer for a family wedding.) There is another potential wedding in Sydney, but the date is as yet undecided. If it fits, we will tie it into this trip, if not, we may do it as a stand-alone. What we are trying to avoid is doing it twice (no refection on NSW) Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:55, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
If you haven't yet birded WA, then you'll find lots of new things there — a number of endemics (including some that are subspecies now, but likely to be elevated to full species) plus some seabirds that are easier to see there than elsewhere in Oz (Red-tailed Tropicbird, anyone?) And the Humpback Whale antics off the west coast can be spectacular! If you're looking for locations or places to stay, let me know and I can email you details. MeegsC | Talk 18:51, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
@Jim, actually there are different critters in NW and SW WA, Broome is pretty exotic and remote, and lots of unusual top end stuff up that way. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:15, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Please take me with you :P.
  1. I will probably try to visit Hong Kong via Wikimania next year, so any intelligence you gather I'd be interested in.
  2. This website is probably the best single site for Australia now. 'Top birding sites by region' will usually give good suggestions. You can also see the seasonal chances of seeing particular species at particular sites, or have it suggest sites for particular species. Watching the 'birdline' for which ever state you are in will alert you to anything interesting. The site lists also narrow things down for birds of prey and the like. As far as Perth goes, I've only had a weekend there, but I gather our summer is best for the Migratory waders. Broome is the best site in WA for that though I think. I got quite a few 'ticks' in a day and a half in WA. I get the impression that the best sites are all very large distances apart though. Hiring a campervan might be the best approach for that state if you have a few weeks.
  3. With respect to Tasmania, if you can give me a date range well in advance (6 months+ is best), then I should be able to book you on a Pelagic trip here. Summer is the right time to come for the Orange-bellied Parrot. 11/12 endemics are usually pretty straightforward, if you know where to look. The Scrubtit can be a bit of a pain to find reliably.
  4. I don't know a huge amount about it, but the Philippines has a few hundred endemic species. India could also be an option. PNG sounds logistically challenging, but I haven't looked into it. I spoke to someone who did a small trip in PNG as a group, and it cost maybe $4000 for several weeks of birding, apparently. Mid year for PNG is probably better though - cooler, and some species migrate from QLD in this time. JJ Harrison (talk) 23:29, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
thanks to everyone, very helpful. I'd like to back to India, a week in Goa being our only previous experience, but for logistical reasons it may not be on this trip. No great rush since at least 10 months away, but I'll definitely take up the offers of help in planning Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:13, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
http://www.backwoodsgoa.com/ is highly rated - but its going to get rain and if you want to make a trip further south in India, let me know. Shyamal (talk) 05:48, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Flight from Australia to PNG are reasonably priced. Internal flights in PNG are quite expensive and prone to cancellations/delays. Crime is a problem, but can generally be avoided by using common sense and not wandering around after nightfall. Land ownership is taken very seriously in PNG. Even random forest patches that you'd never think were owned by anyone, well, they often are and they take tresspassing very seriously. Let's just say the George Zimmerman approach is popular. That's one main reason why guides are of some importance in PNG; it's not really a destination where the complete 'do-it-yourself' (=no use of guides) option is sensible. Like other tropical forest destinations, bird voices are important for the full experience. If you're willing to spend a bit of time practicing beforehand, xeno-canto.org now has a decent PNG collection, but otherwise that is another reason to get a guide. In Port Moresby, there's nice birding on the grounds of the Pacific Adventist University (especially waterbirds, but it's also great for some other things like Papuan Frogmouth) and in the nearby Varirata National Park (nice for lowland/foothill species, incl. Raggiana BOP lek). Other birding locations generally require flights, but if you have the time and money they're well worth it: Kumul Lodge at Mount Hagen has great highland birding, a quite well maintained track and probably THE most amazing bird table in the world: Among the regulars, the highlighs are Ribbon-tailed Astrapia, Brown Sicklebill and Brehm's Tiger Parrot. Tari is another excellent highland locality with the famous Tari Gap nearby (easiest region for e.g. King-of-Saxony and Blue BOP, though both also are possible with luck in Mt. Hagen region). Ambua Lodge is the lodge used by most birders in Tari, but it's expensive and at least one other lodge caters to birders, the Warili Lodge. There are a few other lodges in Mt. Hagen than the Kumul Lodge - just haven't heard anything about them so I can't comment further on those. The best lowland birding that is reasonably easy to access is near Kiunga, notably Ekame Lodge and Kwatu Lodge (accomadations are sufficient but basic); Spangled Owlet Nightjar, Flame Bowerbird, Twelve-wired BOP, Southern Crowned Pigeon, etc. There are numerous other nice PNG locations like Ok Tedi/Tabubil (foothill/highland species, incl. Pesquet's Parrot and Shovel-billed Kookaburra if you're lucky), Wasu (Huon Peninsular endemics) and the Bismarck Archipelago sites (e.g. New Britain endemics), but the last two are beyond most birding tours. For the sites away from Port Moresby, it would probably be sensible to get help with contacts, transportation, etc, from Phil Gregory (of sicklebillsafaris). Alternatively the lodges and their owneres may be able to help if contacted well in advance. Easily possible at less than the $4000 suggested by an earlier poster, but it certainly isn't a cheap vacation site unless you limit it to the Port Moresby region. 62.107.195.210 (talk) 18:15, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
For a three day trip, I think that it is not worth going far, because most of the time will be taken up travelling and using up aircraft fuel. I guess that the pollution caused by aircraft fuel will take up your years allowance (approx) of your share of the Earth's resources. It seems to me that this is not very green, unless I have missed something. Please note that using up loads of aircraft fuel is abhorrent to some people and some of these people may edit bird articles. Please explain how you intend to make your proposed long journeys sustainable on the Earth's resources. I think that using up a lot of aircraft fuel is not a good example to conservationists. I hope that this discussion does not turn out to be spamy for aircraft journeys to far away places. Snowman (talk) 09:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Three locations, not days. No one spending a longer period in front of a computer nearly every day should pretend to be beyond consumerism; this makes the computer one of the more power consuming things if they live in a modern home (=well-insulated, modern kitchen appliances, energy-saving lights, etc) and also filled with very toxic substances (heavy metals, among others; a hell to get rid of when the comp is discarded). I justify my trips by the fact that at a relatively young age I've already done far more conservation related work and spend more money on conservation than most will do in a lifetime, but if these are valid excuses can be discussed. If Jim feels the need to justify his trips; I don't know. Why you would think my reply (IP 62... cf. WHOIS) made it necesssary for you to add a comment on your "fears" of spammy comments is unclear to me. I answered one of Jim's questions, and all the older replies by other users seem to do that too. No more, no less. If it was an indirect indication that this entire Birding info section falls under WP:NOTFORUM, then arguably yes. But since this is the exception rather than the rule on WP:BIRD (the first section I remember seeing in 3+ years that somewhat falls under WP:NOT), I did respond and I note you were the very first person to repond. 212.10.92.198 (talk) 20:00, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Please note that I have changed my mind, since my initial reply, partly because I did not expect to see replies that included pricing details and replies with links to external websites. One of the websites linked above has links to hotels and sicklebillsafaris appears to be an organisation involved in tourism, so I think it is not hard to understand why I am hoping the discussion does not become spamy. I would be interested to see comparisons of the energy used to travel to three distant locations on aircraft and using a PC or a laptop, but this is probably the wrong place for these details. I might be wrong, but as far as I am aware aircraft travel to three distant locations would use up an enormous amount of energy in comparison the energy used up by a laptop in a year. The Wiki is not a travel guide, see WP:NOTGUIDE. Wikipedia:User_pages#Excessive_unrelated_content refers to excessive discussion not related to the Wiki. Snowman (talk) 22:05, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes, Snowman, a laptop alone uses far less energy than a plane, but you're not including your use of the internet. According to a BBC article I recently read, each Google search uses the equivalent energy as boiling a kettle full of water; this is due to the energy needed to power the various servers on which the search engine's databases are housed. My guess is that you're doing dozens, if not hundreds, of searches in a typical day. That's a lot of energy in a year. And that doesn't include the energy for the servers hosting the websites you eventually access. So we're all "guilty", to a greater or lesser extent. And I hardly think that the occasional request for info like this, among regular contributors to the project, constitutes "excessive unrelated content". MeegsC | Talk 22:29, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Google have a reply, see Google reveals energy use to show search is green. Snowman (talk) 22:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Re-think: perhaps this discussion is worthwhile, because it is team building, and so perhaps this discussion is not "excessive unrelated content". Snowman (talk) 22:49, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
I initially wrote the following about energy use for snowman's talk page. Seeing the above comment, I'm adding it here instead, but if it is too unrelated, please feel free to move it to snowman's talk page or elsewhere deemed fitting. This page has energy use for a wide range of things found in a normal home. For most, new models tend to be in lower range, old in the upper. Because of the ever increasing processors, the general "newer=less energy use" unfortunately doesn't fit computer as well. A typical PC is at 120 W (laptop 50 W) + monitor at 150 W = 270 W (there are large differences depending on model, but this is approx. average). For comparison, a clothes dryer bought within the last few years is typically at 1800-2500 W and it has the 2nd highest (only water heater is above). Consequently, 1 hour of clothes dryer = 7–10 hours of typical PC+monitor. Then it's basically a matter of comparing usage of the two; how many hours of computer per week compared to clothes dryer. That's without internet: As noted above, one google search "only" uses about 1/35 of the "boiling water kettle" example initially claimed in a BBC article, but it adds up. Comparing this to a flight is complicated, but see Fuel efficiency in transportation#Aircraft. 1 liter of jet fuel approx. equals 5.25 x 10^7 J and no engine is 100% efficient. Comparison of CO2 and alike is even harder because it depends heavily on your energy supply; coal based, nuclear based, renewal energy based, etc. In summary, anyone trying to be all green (a very noble–but arguably impossible–goal) shouldn't fly, use a computer much, use a clothes dryer, take warm showers or eat meat for that matter. 212.10.92.198 (talk) 00:18, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, almost everyone in the West uses up a lot of energy, but some use more than others. Some quick estimations: Snowman (talk) 10:00, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

  • Energy used by one 70 watt laptop in 14 hours = 1 Kwatt-hour (approx) Snowman (talk) 10:22, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
    • Bird spotting trip is approximately equivalent to 390,000 hours using a laptop (or using a laptop for ten hours per day for about 100 years). Snowman (talk) 10:22, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
      • What if we all went on bird-spotting holidays to the other side of the world rather than staying at home and using a laptop computer? As far as I am aware, it is well known that aircraft travel uses up a vast quantity of energy and releases a lot of toxic gasses. I think that people who try to reduce there energy consumption to be greener would limit there aircraft travel as a matter of priority or, if air travel was vital, they would help the environment in alternative ways. Snowman (talk) 10:00, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Incidentally, a lot of people in the UK use a washing line to dry their clothes. Some people might only use an electric drying machine occasionally in bad weather in the winter when clothes do not dry quickly outside and in cold weather drying machines can double as a heater, since they produce a lot of heat. Snowman (talk) 10:31, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Of course, Snowman, the flip side of this is that without ecotourists, people in many third world countries have absolutely no incentive to keep and maintain their wild places. If there are no tourists to pay the locals to see the birds (or the monkeys or the rainforest) then why not chop that rainforest down and put cows there. Or corn. Or palm trees. All of which can earn local people money. And then all the species that depend on those rain forests are gone forever. And people will, eventually, likely be one of those species! So it's not all quite as cut and dried as you'd like to make it. Yes, we need to be careful about our use of energy. But can we now all please stop bashing each other about this and get back to work?! MeegsC | Talk 13:45, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
I've added a comment on energy to snowman's talk page. Should someone ask me about something related to the energy discussion, I will reply on their talk page. If I add more comments here, they will only be directly related to the Jim's initial questions. 212.10.92.198 (talk) 16:26, 21 May 2012 (UTC)


Thanks again for input, Sydney and a return to India probably won't be on the agenda for next year, but both are still on the wish list. I'll do a bit more research, but PNG seems both expensive and difficult. Perhaps I should look at a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur, or return to Singapore for a day or two. Anyway, I saw a Cream-coloured Courser in Herefordshire yesterday, so why travel at all (: Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:49, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Evergreen Forest Warbler

Looks like this one could use a little reworking. Near as I can tell, most of the tax sites (including Clements, the IOC and Zoonomen) consider the current listing for Evergreen Forest Warbler (ssp.mariae) a subspecies of Bradypterus lopezi, which they all in turn call Evergreen Forest Warbler, then in which case mariae has no common name.

So, the best thing to do(?) is to delete the current listing for Evergreen Forest Warbler (B. l. mariae) since it is only a stub, and then move the article Cameroon Scrub-warbler which is Bradypterus lopezi to Evergreen Forest Warbler, as other tax sites have it listed. That should clear things up on this one. Again, I'd do it, but I'm not an admin, so I can't delete.......Pvmoutside (talk) 23:09, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

I've merged the content, such as it is, and done the move Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:50, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Looks great Jim....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:10, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Tapaculo pronunciation

Does anyone know which syllable is stressed? SP-KP (talk) 09:29, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

The "cu". MeegsC | Talk 11:26, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming. I'll update the article. SP-KP (talk) 11:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is of spanish etymology, a composite of a verbal form + a substantive. Loosely translated it means to cover, or conceal the culus (gr.) (i.e., the buttocks). The logic escapes me personally, and it might be interesting if this was a conscious naming by a naturalist, or something handed down from folk knowledge.Steve Pryor (talk) 16:50, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Although the Spanish origin is the most frequently quoted, it may also be onomatopoeic. This matter has caused some discussions at NEOORN, but no one seemed to be entirely sure what was the right explanation (or if both are); the discussions were back in 2009 if I remember right. 212.10.92.198 (talk) 20:18, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Renaming discussion regarding article Ploceidae

The proposed renaming being discussed at Talk:Ploceidae#Move request may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Favonian (talk) 21:20, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Help

I could use some help with a project I'm considering. The project is a page were all Bird info sites can be found in one place as well as other animal info sites. Please say if you can help. Nhog (talk) 19:12, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Nhog. I'm not sure Wikipedia is the place for such a page, as lists of links are not acceptable here. See Wikipedia:Not#Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files for more information. MeegsC | Talk 20:01, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Its not a list of links its a list of various organizations. Here's the page its not completed yet. Its like the two things I did just above. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:List_of_bird_conservation_groups_and_websitesNhog (talk) 20:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I presume this is for resource page and would be a sub-page of WikiProject Birds. There is already a paragraph on the WP Birds main page that includes some resources, and I think that a more extensive list is likely to be quite useful. The list with links and a brief comment on each might be useful, perhaps presented in a table. Of course, avoid spamy sites. Snowman (talk) 20:50, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I was more thinking that I would try to make a page that list a lot of different sites and organizations for doing research. It would have sevrel different language categories so everyone can use it. I would just need people to help by sending in a lot of different sites for organizations. Oh by the way how do you make the title of the page. Nhog (talk) 22:16, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think if it is a resource page for wikiproject, then that is a very good idea. Either have on the main wikiproject page or a subpage called Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/resources or something. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:43, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok thanks. Nhog (talk) 17:41, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Bad talk pages

Can an administrator please take a look at the Rock Ptarmigan talk page? Right now, it redirects to the Ptarmigan talk page, but since the latter is a DAB, that's not appropriate! Thanks, MeegsC | Talk 19:21, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

And, in a related mix-up, our article is located at Willow Ptarmigan, but the talk page is at Talk:Willow Grouse! MeegsC | Talk 19:24, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Okay, fixed up. Sometimes in these days of moving pages to new standard names, or when splitting, talk pages get lost. Maias (talk) 02:08, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
There's still an issue — everything currently on the DAB talk page (Talk:Ptarmigan belongs on the Talk:Rock Ptarmigan page! MeegsC | Talk 14:51, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
Well, it would be simple enough to do a cut and paste. However, I am not sure whether that is the best thing to do. The content derives from before Ptarmigan became a dab, so is part of the history of that page and, perhaps, should stay with it. Maias (talk) 01:26, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Except that, if you're using that logic, then the content of the article was also part of the history of the article page — and yet that got moved (in its entirety) to Rock Ptarmigan in 2009 to make way for the DAB page. The problem is that the talk page didn't get moved at the same time, as it should have. MeegsC | Talk 01:46, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Fine, so moved. Maias (talk) 02:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Maias! MeegsC | Talk 03:05, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Locked Pages VIII

The latest installment:

...............Thanks!......Pvmoutside (talk) 15:26, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Done all except the disambig case. Shyamal (talk) 03:06, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Can you add this.

Can you add this list to references or online resources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nhog/List_of_bird_conservation_groups_and_websites Nhog (talk) 17:47, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Probably needs references or links to external websites. Snowman (talk) 22:07, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I cant have them be links to the websites directly it says I'm breaking some rule so they are the names of the organzations which pepole can then look up and go to. Nhog (talk) 17:34, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Window-tapping gulls...

Are they merely trying to interact with their own reflections? Or sometimes do they tap on the window to attract the attention of the humans on the other side of the glass?

I'm pretty sure that it's the latter on at least some occasions, when dealing with gulls that are fed by people regularly. It certainly seemed that the ones that used to tap on my window were looking directly at me and following my movements. Does anyone here have direct experience with 'tappy' seagulls? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:22, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Pigeon racing controversy

I have made some observations here regarding the controversy section of the Pigeon Racing article. In this matter, I do not have a compelling COI, but do have a close personal connection, so I was hoping to collaborate with another editor who feels they are better positioned to be objective. User:King4057 (COI Disclosure on User Page) 16:41, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Nest

Any of you Aussies in a position to get a picture of a Western Spinebill nest? I stumbled across the article while working on the most overdue of our cleanup listing problems (tagged in 2006!!) and have been working on referencing and expanding it. Actually any photos would be great, as there are spectacularly few available anywhere. Cas, can you recommend a good, appropriate Banksia photo? I know they're primary pollinators of a few species... MeegsC | Talk 16:58, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

If you can get access to HANZAB Vol.5 there is much info there about food plants, including Banksia attenuata (of at least 10 Banksia species mentioned there), of which there are several images on Commons. Maias (talk) 12:56, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Online resorces

I added a bunch more to the online resorces.Nhog (talk) 18:51, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Capitalization issues

Looks like User:Bob Burkhardt just moved a many of the Kingbird species, and Fork-tailed Flycatcher to lower case for the second word........Anyone want to chage back and explain to the user? I'd do it, but I'm blocked.......Pvmoutside (talk) 19:23, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Also made a typo-sorry.....Chestnut-backed Scimitar abbler should be Chestnut-backed Scimitar Babbler PM
Okay - changed back now and advised the editor. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:50, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

More shakeups

In the Timaliidae branches. In press doi:10.1093/sysbio/sys027 Shyamal (talk) 05:25, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that this is not a shake-up, which would suggest a random process. This is a re-organisation made in the light of new genetic research. Snowman (talk) 09:58, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
According to the Merriam New World dictionary, a shake up is defined as "a radical reorganization" rather than a random process. So really you're both agreeing. MeegsC | Talk 14:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
"Out-Sheldon-ed" was a neologism I heard recently ! Shyamal (talk) 15:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Ha! I like that... Though I'm not sure I want to be compared to Sheldon!  :) MeegsC | Talk 16:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Semi-automated tasks

I would welcome ideas for semi-automated tasks. I might be able to work on this soon, but I am likely to be busy for a few more weeks. As far as I am aware, a previous semi-automated task, checking and adding genus authorities was successful. With a Perl script and a data file, I scanned about 2000 bird genus pages and added missing authorities or made corrections. Snowman (talk) 09:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

  • Thanks for writing a program to do that Snowman! Is there any way you could check/update IUCN codes? An editor stripped those all out when the IUCN changed its website address several years ago, and the codes have been unchecked and unreferenced (except for those relative few that people have individually updated) ever since. MeegsC | Talk 13:43, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
The IUCN codes are those given by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. They're the codes listed just under the photo at the top of the taxobox: LC, VU, NT, EX, etc. Here's one I updated manually back in December. Basically, you'd need to find the matching record (via scientific name, presumably) on the IUCN website, and enter/check the code we have in our article. I guess this would be another program for a bot, really, because again, it's for a large number of species. MeegsC | Talk 17:00, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
I see. I have just been practising with Perl and got it to see a webpage. I have not looked at the structure of the IUCN webpages yet, but I expect it should be possible to data-scrape the IUCN webpages. I think it would need a well organised perl script, perhaps with a few sub-routines. I will think about writing a script that will do the task on-the-fly by data-scraping IUCN webpages as the script precedes or making data files that a script can use to update the en Wiki pages. I would get it to write log files when the IUCN taxonomy does not match the en Wiki, and I guess I would appreciate some people to support me with any ornithology issues. I am still busy, so do not expect any results soon and I am not promising anything, but I find it fun to think about the possibilities. This sort of work may be best done in the winter. Snowman (talk) 22:23, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Anytime you could get to it would be great; it's very time-consuming having to do each one by hand. I'd be very happy to assist with any issues that come up. If it could be easily modified to work for other organisms as well, I'll bet that the other biology wikiprojects would be excited about this too. MeegsC | Talk 22:31, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
I have tested one page from the iucn website and a brief testing script viewed it and from that it is a few easy steps to automatically extracting (or data-scraping) key information from that one page. However, data scraping the the whole website on birds and putting the data in an array or directly into en Wikipages will need a well organised script and this is assuming that the iucn web-pages all have the same regular structure. IUCN webpages are in the format; "http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/106008083/0". It seems that birds are numbered from about 106001000/0 to about 106009000/0. Does anyone know anything about the webpage numbering on the iucn website? Does anyone have a spreadsheet or lists of all the iucn content on birds? Snowman (talk) 18:52, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
  • And how about adding links to the appropriate wikicommons pages for any species/genera that we have media for? Some articles already have the link, but many more do not. MeegsC | Talk 13:49, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Having added a few signposts to Commons on the en Wiki, I thought about this problem some time ago. I could add a link to Commons, if there is an image in the infobox, but sometimes that might be the only image on Commons or it might be an image on en Wiki without there being any images on Commons for that particular species. I should be able to scan Commons with LWP and count the number of images for a species on Commons before adding the signpost to the en Wiki species page. Being over 10,000 bird articles to scan, I think this would be best done with dedicated script that can be run as a bot. At this early juncture, except for the vast number of pages that necessitate running it as a bot, this looks easier than adding the genus authorities. I am not promising anything at this juncture. Snowman (talk) 17:23, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Could we run such a bot regularly (i.e. once a quarter or something)? That would allow us to add a signpost if media was added for a species that hadn't had any before, or if additional pictures/videos/recordings were added to an already existing species that had only had one item. MeegsC | Talk 16:43, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
I would need to find out more about bots and think about it a bit more. There seem to be lots of options of ways of reporting what bird images have been added to Commons. Snowman (talk) 22:23, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

If you have code that can run by itself and is well tested you should have no problem getting it approved by a BRFA. A handy little feature would be to test Commons category links, and ensure that an appropriate category exists. Easiest (fastest) way is to download the list of categories first and use that for a first pass. Rich Farmbrough, 19:00, 1 June 2012 (UTC).

I could scan Commons first and list the number of images in bird categories. Classification differences between Commons and en Wiki could make some species edits complicated. What is BRFA? Snowman (talk) 19:06, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
WP:BRFA = Bots/Request for Approval. I think all bots have to be approved before they can be used on the 'pedia. MeegsC | Talk 12:08, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Sandwich Tern

At Commons, I was asked to split the existing Sandwich Tern map to separate maps for T. acuflavidus and T. sandvicensis. We don't have that split here, any views? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:23, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Maybe just use two colours on the one map and then we can use for two taxa regardless of whether on one or two pages....I was not familiar with that split. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:39, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
If there is not a split, why not use a colour for each of the three subspecies. Snowman (talk) 13:05, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I've split the map for Commons (just divided the old map down the Atlantic), and two cats exist there for the two (sub)species. I'm just pointing out that Commons has taken a different view to us, and inviting comment on whether we split or lump. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:03, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Commons follows the IOC World Bird List classification, which has come up before, I think we decided not to follow them automatically. The IOC cites Efe et al 2009 and the AOU (though the AOU doesn't have the split on its checklist), if you want to look at the sources. —innotata 15:26, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Birds for identifiction (144)

Confirmed.Steve Pryor (talk) 08:06, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Shown in infobox on en Wiki species page. Commons has an illustration and this new photograph is the first photograph of the species on the Wiki. Snowman (talk) 14:39, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Confirmed.Steve Pryor (talk) 08:06, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I believe Golden-headed Quetzal is the only yellow-billed quetzal with a totally black tail from below. Natureguy1980 (talk) 21:03, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Is it male or female? Snowman (talk) 08:24, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
I can't see it any more, so I'm not sure, but females duller overall. Natureguy1980 (talk) 18:37, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Update: Golden-headed Quetzal moved to File:Pharomachrus auriceps -San Diego Zoo, California, USA-8a.jpg on Commons. Snowman (talk) 21:05, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Def a male. Natureguy1980 (talk) 02:46, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Looks like a griffon of some sort. Natureguy1980 (talk) 21:03, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Rüppell's Vulture. MeegsC | Talk 00:08, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Moved to File:Gyps rueppellii -San Diego Zoo, California, USA-8a.jpg on Commons and selected to be shown on en Wiki specied page. Snowman (talk) 09:31, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Nope--that species is endemic to Mexico. This is Campylopterus curvipennis pampa (Wedge-tailed Sabrewing). Natureguy1980 (talk) 02:36, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
Michael, a question because I am away from my sources here at work. Has not taxon pampa been split, or am I misremembering something else?Steve Pryor (talk) 06:15, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Moved to File:Campylopterus curvipennis -Belize-8.jpg on Commons and shown in infobox on en Wiki species page. First photograph of the species on the Wiki. Anyone, who is certain of the subspecies, can write it in the image details on Commons. Snowman (talk) 22:01, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
Will check it out later, today if I have time. On first impression, the bill is too weak. Elaenia perhaps?.Steve Pryor (talk) 06:05, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Snow, I checked it. As I surmised, it is Yellow-bellied Elaenia. Will check out the two hummers above when I can.Steve Pryor (talk) 16:57, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Steve got the elaenia. The sabrewing is actually a Wedge-tailed Sabrewing and a fast, incomplete check of the flickr Belize gallery from this user reveals another problem: Gray-chested Dove (= Short-billed Pigeon). 212.10.92.198 (talk) 20:06, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Yellow-bellied Elaenia moved to File:Elaenia flavogaster -Belize-8.jpg on Commons. Snowman (talk) 22:01, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
Rufous Treepie. Maias (talk) 00:00, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Moved to File:Dendrocitta vagabunda -India -deer-8.jpg on Commons. What is it doing on a deer's head? Snowman (talk) 20:20, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
To quote the Wikipedia article "It has been observed feeding on parasites of wild deer.": Bharucha, EK (1987). "An observation on the relationship between a Sambar and a Tree-Pie". J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 84 (3): 675.
Brown Honeyeater. Maias (talk) 02:01, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
I've updated the description. —innotata 02:19, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
Tropical Mockingbird is the only Mimus in Venezuela, so it is undoubtedly that species. Natureguy1980 (talk) 22:45, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Recategorised the image —innotata 22:16, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Booted Eagle - recent edit

See diff. "It hunts small mammals, reptiles and birds, and can carry away prey up to 5 times its own weight". Is the added section, here in bold correct? Just checking. Sounds dubious, but I'm not certain. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:53, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Reason I ask, is that I have heard stories of some of the great eagles (should that be a redirect somewhere, or even an article?) being able to one-shot wolves and carry them away, despite them weighing more than the bird. Though I'm not sure if that's strictly fact or not either... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:06, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
No bird can fly while carrying 5 times its own weight. MeegsC | Talk 23:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
The claim that they can kill animals 5x heavier than themselves is just about credible since birds are very light for their size, but I think the claim that they could carry such prey needs an RS reference to be acceptable Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:01, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I am sure that somebody has taken individual birds, usually captive, perhaps their own, and measured how much they can carry. However, I have never seen a reputable study on this subject. A lot of factors would come into play. They would include the composition of the lifting muscles of the breast, the length and shape of the lifting surfaces, and this would likely be associated to bird types, which genera. Another factor is the gripping strength of the feet. It would be less likely for certain genera to carry great loads because they have short claws, and weak feet., e.g., Caracara genera, old world Kite genera, etc., Possibly some birds could carry more if they launched themselves into thermals from elevated jumping off points. However, as a general rule of thumb, and this is entirely annecdotal, you should not expect any raptor to be able to launch from a flat zone, with no oncoming wind currents, with a load exceeding at the most, and even this might be a reach, of more than half of its body weight. The largest Eagle species, of whichever genera, are females and they reach at the most about 20lbs. in the wild. Steve Pryor (talk) 11:51, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Some birds of prey launch from the surface of water after catching a big fish. Snowman (talk) 12:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
No bird of prey launches from the water with a fish of 5x its body weight. In fact, Ospreys have been known to drown when they "hook" too big a fish. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that birds of prey don't have waterproofing oils on their feathers, so they become quickly waterlogged if they end up getting doused. MeegsC | Talk 12:55, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Osprey would probably be the best bet, since it's evolved to lift fish from the water and its prey is helpfully aerodynamic (and carried head-first). Nevertheless, even the 7kg salmon in the third image looks too much to handle. You can get an idea of how the weight feels in this video Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:06, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
According to Cornell University's Laboratory of Ornithology, the largest prey on record is about 2.5 pounds. Birds of North America, which included information on populations from around the world, says the typical prey has 10–30% of the Osprey's mass, with some exceptional catches averaging slightly more than 50%. MeegsC | Talk 16:37, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
"Accounts of the weight that an eagle can carry in flight often have been misstated. Experiments indicate that without wind to assist them even large eagles cannot take off from flat ground with more than 5 or 6 pounds (2 to 3 kg) in their talons. Eagles flying into the wind and taking prey from hillsides, however, sometimes carry animals of twice those weights for considerable distances." From a reputable-looking source, which unfortunately doesn't cite its source. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 16:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Can anyone provide a reliable source to say if a White-tailed Eagle's feathers are waterproofed or not? Snowman (talk) 22:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't think you will find an RS because it is simply assumed that land birds don't have waterproofing. It's confined to aquatic species like ducks and loons, and not even all of those (that's why cormorants stand with their wings outstretched to dry). Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:11, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

So, are there any objections to my removing the phrase about carrying the prey from the article? Looking at the contribs of the IP who added this, he's also made the same claim about the Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle, the Bonelli's Eagle (already reverted) and the Tawny Eagle (probably the same person using a different IP). Also - Wedge-tailed Eagles... do they engage in cannibalism? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:52, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Is is possible that small chicks might be eaten by larger chicks in the nest when food is in short supply? Snowman (talk) 13:07, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Or by other adults from neighbouring territories? That was my initial thought. I know that gulls have little or no problem with eating the young of their own species in this manner. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:51, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
It's very unlikely that young would be eaten by a neighbouring adult, these are non-colonial birds with huge ranges. Siblicide is common in eagles, but I don't know about this one Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:12, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, I've gone and reverted all that stuff now. Based upon the discussion here, all additions from that IP would seem to be factually dubious at best... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Category:Dendroica

Now that all the Dendroica warblers have moved to Setophaga, is there any way the Category can be moved?....Pvmoutside (talk) 16:54, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I've started that (you don't actually move the category page, you create a new one and make the old one a category redirect). Can you merge the Dendroica article now? —innotata 23:14, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
There's nothing to merge, I see, everything was copied initially, so I've merged the two articles. I'll suggest they have their histories merged, since this was essentially a cut-and-paste move. —innotata 23:45, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Is it possible to do an enit-history merge on two old articles like these? I think that keeping the current redirect at Dendroica will be sufficient to persevere the edit-history of the Dendroica page. Snowman (talk) 12:59, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
I think it's been done, though there may too much overlapping history here. But keeping the history at Dendroica will be fine too, which is why I added the {{copied}} templates to the talk pages. —innotata 14:49, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Except I'm not sure that Dendroica should just be a redirect. This is a recent move, with results based on one DNA study. Not every taxonomic authority has followed suit, so it's still possible for people out there to be looking for Dendroica — which should probably at least have a stub article that says something to the effect that while some taxonomists feel this is now a defunct genus, others disagree. I was going to ask what amount of information should be kept for defunct genera. I was working on a Good Topic (Red Warbler, Pink-headed Warbler, Ergaticus) and the genus has now been subsumed into Cardellina. Should we keep some amount of historical info in Dendroica, Ergaticus, etc. which are still the genera used on (for example) websites for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, IUCN, HBW's Internet Bird Collection, the Academy of Natural Sciences' Visual Resources for Ornithology and others? MeegsC | Talk 17:44, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
With regard to obsolete taxa, apart from the possibility of resurrection, I think there is a case for retaining historical information, though whether that is done in the taxonomy section of the new taxon or in an article on the old one probably depends on just how much information there is. Molecular taxonomy is certainly creating many examples. Maias (talk) 02:06, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
PS. I note there is a category for obsolete taxonomic groups. Maias (talk) 02:14, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Here, the new genus is little different, it's more like a rename. I don't think there's enough difference between the two particular classifications or notable attributes of the name Dendroica to merit separate articles. If there is a discussion of it wasn't present; the article was copy-pasted. —innotata 02:44, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Peregrine Falcon

Hey I was wondering how Peregrine Falcons handel the G-forces when coming out of a dive. They have to rapidly decelerate which causes Gs so how do they do it without blacking out. Nhog — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhog (talk • contribs) 18:12, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Do you know what G-force can be expected? Do you know of any literature on this topic? Presumably the deceleration is due to wind resistance mainly to its wings, which have a finite strength. It may not need to pump blood "uphill", if a line between the bird's heart and brain is perpendicular to the de-accelerating forces. Also, I suspect that the bird is able to control its deceleration. Please note that this in entirely speculation and this should not be added to any Wiki article. Snowman (talk) 08:37, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
There seems to be a lot of guesswork and little factual basis for the G-force experienced, but it's difficult to believe that it's greater than for the pilot of a modern jet fighter, with its much greater speed and acceleration Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:03, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes but at the same time they are much smaller animals so to them it may be like experiencing the same force of G's. Plus they have to cactch there prey which is sometimes on the ground so they have to pull up harder than a jet fighter. Nhog — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhog (talk • contribs) 17:20, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Do they ever actually 'stoop' at prey on the ground (I think that would actually kill the falcon)? I thought that the high-speed dive was only used against aerial opponents, to smash them out of the sky? If you're hitting a rat (or whatever) at 200mph, then you're pretty much hitting the ground at 200mph too. Which I'd imagine would cause a case of terminal deceleration in just about anything living. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 17:26, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I just rembered I have a friend of the famliy who works in the Peregrin Fund he is a rescercher he may be able to help. Here is there website. http://www.globalraptors.org/grin/indexAlt.asp Nhog — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhog (talk • contribs) 17:31, 15 May 2012 (UTC) As to the what you just said they sometimes do dive at ground targets but they have to pull up and rapidly decelerate. Nhog — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhog (talk • contribs) 17:35, 15 May 2012 (UTC) Hey I just found this it may help. http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/09/hummingbirds_endure_extrme_g-forces/ Nhog — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhog (talk • contribs) 17:46, 15 May 2012 (UTC) I would like to point out so at a later date no one gets mad at me for something I dident do I have no intention of adding this to any article unless I am asked or I have unquestionable proof.Nhog (talk) 18:17, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Good news I have contacted the Peregrine fund and the person who wrote back does not know about it but he is asking around so that should help. Anyways you should really check them out.Nhog (talk) 14:47, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that kestrels, sparrowhawks and owls manage to catch rodents by approaching them at quite a slow speed, so why would a Peregrine Falcon want to fly at a rodent on the ground at 200 mph. There might be some videos out there to give you some idea of what happens. Snowman (talk) 20:35, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
You might consider comparative anatomy and analyse the structure of the vascular system of these falcons and compare it with that of other birds to see if it has any specialisations or unusual features. Snowman (talk) 20:57, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
In humans rapid deceleration can cause gross distortion of the internal chest structures leading to a fractured aorta (as well as multiple injuries). I understand that this is seen in aircraft crashes and high speed car crashes. I think that falcons would have evolved to avoid flying at 200 mph towards solid structures including the ground. Snowman (talk) 21:15, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
The fact that peregrines are smaller than people makes it easier, not harder, for them to withstand high accelerations. Compare the very high accelerations experienced by fleas.
There are two questions, I think. One is the forces that peregrines and other falcons feel after stooping. These are exerted on the wings (and tail), as Snowman pointed out, when the bird pulls out of a dive, or on the feet when it hits its prey in flight, so the wings and legs and their attachments to the body have to be very strong. It's interesting that hitting the prey does a lot more damage to the prey than to the falcon.
The other question is the acceleration (measured in g's) that these forces cause, which can affect the blood supply to the brain. I'd imagine the accelerations last much less time in falcons than in fighter pilots, maybe not enough time to affect brain function. But that's pure speculation.
Of course, the birds that experience the strongest forces and highest accelerations of the head are woodpeckers, but people have studied their adaptations in some detail. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 14:16, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
With falcons, it's the sharp talons of the raptor making contact with the flesh of the prey, so it's not surprising that the latter comes off worst. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:49, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
That seems to be true sometimes but not always. The Peregrine Falcon, by Ratcliffe, says the talons are often involved, but not always, and "the most satisfactory explanation" is that the bird strikes with its foot loosely closed, often with the rear talon sticking out and stabbing the prey. However, "the force is often considerable", and sometimes prey have been found with bruising but no blood. Peregrine Falcon says the target is one wing, with a deleted USFWS page accessed through the Wayback Machine as a source. I'm not seeing the page. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:04, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Videos: Arkive, National Geographic on YouTube. Snowman (talk) 09:47, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
I do not see any potentially fatal deceleration in these videos. The falcon hunting the pigeon does a lot of aerial acrobatics. The falcon diving appears to match its speed to the food, but it might behave differently if it was hunting live food. Are there any videos of a falcon diving into prey at speed? Snowman (talk) 11:01, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

When the it hits the lure in the video it is going over 183 mph and later 243 mph. It pulls out of the dive just before it hits the lure and must be pulling some G's because it is rapidly declerating. Nhog (talk) 17:28, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

This is probably a bit of a non-answer - but I'd consider it likely that the Peregrine Falcon's body has evolved over however many tens of thousands/millions of years to handle the strain of fairly regular rapid decelerations whilst minimizing injury. The need for humans to be able to tolerate likewise is a far more recent occurrence. It's really no more surprising than a Hyacinth Macaw being able to crack the hardest nuts in the world with its beak (e.g. macadamia, palm nuts), whereas a human is unable to do the same with his teeth. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:31, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree completly but you have to wonder how they survive the G forces. I think (I am no expert on the subect) it may have something to do with there anotmy, how they pull out of a dive and how the wind goes over there wings and body. Nhog (talk) 17:13, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Deceleration and acceleration are not directly related to speed. Of course, deceleration and acceleration are rate of change of speed. As far as I am aware a manned space capsule returning from the moon travels at about 17,000 miles per hour in the "vacuum" of space and the deceleration occurs to a speed of zero owing to friction with the Earth's atmosphere and its landing on the sea or ground. Snowman (talk) 10:06, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes but they have to rapidly decelerate in order to hit their prey like it shows in the video (here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mTPEuFcWk) it has to slow down by rapidly decelerating. It is going nearly 200mph and later it went over 200mph. Nhog (talk) 17:12, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that it is artificial to take a falcon upto 12,000 feet and let it dive vertically downwards. However, I looked at the video again and I did not see any life-threatening deceleration when the bird grasped the lead-weighted bait. What is the birds maximum speed under natural conditions? Snowman (talk) 17:57, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Plese notice it just before it catches the lure it pulls out of the dive rapidly declerating. Nhog (talk) 18:27, 30 May 2012 (UTC) Also the problem is nobody knows how fast they go in a dive they have estamites but nobody knows for sure.Nhog (talk) 18:29, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I only took physics to a high school level (and that was several years ago) and I'll be damned if I can pull the terminology out of my brain at the moment, but wouldn't the fact that a Peregrine Falcon is really only a little bird, all things considered, mean that it will experience less force upon deceleration than (say) a human-sized object travelling at the same speed would? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 21:02, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I think that the forces are the same for things of all sizes, but the consequences may be different. The distance between the heart and brain is smaller in smaller creatures, so for a given acceleration (or deceleration) the strain on the hearts of smaller creatures will be less. Snowman (talk) 22:10, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree and I'm not sure about this but mabey they can pump blood to there brain quickier or slower when decelerating. Nhog (talk) 17:09, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

By the way, have you considered asking your question at the Science Reference Desk and linking them to the existing discussion here? You'll be able to get a few more, different eyes and brains on it - and probably the thoughts of a few people who are not really into birds, but can explain the physics of it very well... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:45, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks it will be worth a try. Nhog (talk) 15:32, 4 June 2012 (UTC) I tryed but it isent coming up with anything usfull. Nhog (talk) 17:10, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Wilsonia CFD

I have filed a deletion request for Category:Wilsonia, given that it is now empty. All of its former members were moved to other genera following the big Parulidae reshuffle. Please make any comments on the deletion log. MeegsC | Talk 16:03, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I added a CFD for Category:Parula as well, for the same reason. MeegsC | Talk 16:07, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I've added Category:Dendroica also.....Pvmoutside (talk) 17:23, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Why not use a category redirect? Snowman (talk) 18:17, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Why keep a category that isn't being used—and will never be used? I can see keeping an article about each now-defunct genus, but not a category. MeegsC | Talk 18:41, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Would you call a "category redirect" a fully functional category? Snowman (talk) 19:12, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, it is a category. You find it by typing "category:dendroica" (or whatever) into the search box. But that's the only way you'd find it, so I don't see the point of keeping it, to be honest. MeegsC | Talk 19:21, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
It is an interesting problem about what to do with categories of genera that have new names due to a re-classification. Does the "Tree of life" project have the answer? Why not put the article Wilsonia (bird) in Category:Wilsonia? Commons still has a category Wilsonia. Someone might look for the category on en Wiki, if they had just looked at the category on Commons. Snowman (talk) 21:15, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
I note that the discussions for deletions have been closed. Two are now redirects and the Category Wilsonia has been deleted. Should the Category Wilsonia be recreated and contain the page "Wilsonia (bird)"? Snowman (talk) 09:23, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
No, it shouldn't. According to WP:Overcategorization, categories containing only a single article shouldn't be created. I would think that leaving it in category:Parulidae should be fine. MeegsC | Talk 09:38, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I see. Snowman (talk) 09:54, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I expect that the two new redirect categories can go in the Category:Obsolete taxonomic groups or a new category for birds; perhaps, Category:Obsolete bird taxonomic groups, which would be useful. Snowman (talk) 11:47, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Regarding Overcategorization, there are now some categories for some genus articles that formerly had many members, but now have one (Category:Oporornis comes to mind off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others). I'm guessing they are better left up than deleted....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:19, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Some African parrots and a page move

I am puzzled by the page move of Psittacini to African Parrot and to African parrot by the next edit by a different user. Some lovebird species of parrots are also native to Africa. An comments? Snowman (talk) 11:48, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Correct, and solved. Taxonomy also cleaned up. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 14:02, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Africna parrot should probably become a disamgig page.-- Kim van der Linde at venus 14:04, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Fine. Snowman (talk) 14:57, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Messy parrots almost cleaned up

[Topic ressurrected from archive, and copied to KimvdLinde's talk page]: There's still a little bit of work to do before the new parrot systematics are completely reflected (take a look, for example, at Parrot#Phylogeny, Cockatoo#Taxonomy and New_Zealand_parrot#Systematics). I'm not confident I know how to fix the problems, or rather I am confident I know what to do on those specific pages, but I don't know what kind of system KimvdLinde used to work through the parrot pages, so although I could fix these, I'm not sure what that would leave unfixed. Kim, are you still active or have you gone back into retirement? SP-KP (talk) 17:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Tow of three were already done, updated parrot.-- Kim van der Linde at venus 18:24, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

There are a few points outstanding:

  • Parrot#Phylogeny compares the Cacatuoidea to the Psittacidae in respect of the Dyck texture - should this comparison now refer to the Psittacoidea?
  • Parrot#Phylogeny also says "Lorikeets were previously regarded as a third family" but this doesn't really make sense as there is no prior mention of families one and two.
  • The first paragraph of Cockatoo#Taxonomy still refers to the Strigopidae as the earliest offshoot, and then refers to the Psittacoidea radiation as the Psittacidae.

SP-KP (talk) 13:02, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Semi-automated and automated tasks

I have been some coding making some data files for automated and semi-automated tasks. Some of the data files and sub-routines might be useful for other tasks. I have just scanned (without any editing) all the 1491 articles in the category Tyranni (recursive) looking for articles that have a common name different to the IOC common name in their latest spreadsheet (ver 3.1). My script took about 1 hour to run and the out-put is below: Snowman (talk) 18:30, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

At the present time I am not sure how good or bad the above list is or what mistakes or omissions there are, since this is the first run of the script. As expected it has detected names with different accents and names with different USA and UK spellings, which might be worthwhile considering. Some of the differences are likely to be because of taxonomy differences and I am hoping that erudite editors will be able to advice on the ornithology. I am planning to scan all the Wiki bird species articles and so I would like some feedback on what might be useful and for improvements to the script. The list above includes article names like "Rifleman (bird)", which I could exclude, but it might be useful to have a list of article names with a suffix like this. A complete run on all the bird articles could take about 10 to 12 hours (overnight when I am asleep) and the out-put will probably be ten times bigger. I could include the relevant line numbers in the IOC spreadsheet if needed in the output (perhaps alongside the binomial). Does anyone want a list of articles that are about sub-species or anything else? Snowman (talk) 18:30, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Similar for parrots: Snowman (talk)

Some of these have been discussed before and so discussion may not need to be re-ploughed. Snowman (talk) 21:36, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I have placed # in front of all names where it involves taxonomy. Basically, IOC split more species than wiki currently does. In most cases, this is already described in the respective articles (see Shrike-like Laniisoma, Royal Flycatcher, Yellow-margined Flatbill, etc). If these are moved to the IOC name, someone (not me!) has to modify them to match the IOC taxonomy, and make entirely new pages to fit the additional split species. For example, if Striped Woodhaunter → Eastern Woodhaunter:
  1. Eastern Woodhaunter: Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama should be removed from the distribution, the comment that the genus is monotypic should be removed, and the article should mention that Western Woodhaunter (H. virgatus) is treated as a separate species.
  2. "Striped woodhaunter" (with "Striped Woodhaunter" redirecting) would become the genus page for Hyloctistes. If the scientific name is preferred for the article name instead, striped woodhaunter (and the caps version) would be redirected to Hyloctistes.
  3. A new page for Western Woodhaunter (H. virgatus) should be started.
In four other cases, it is British vs. US spelling: Mouse-coloured (aka -colored) Tapaculo, Many-coloured (aka -colored) Rush Tyrant, American Gray (aka Grey) Flycatcher and Gray (aka Grey) Kingbird. If these are moved, please remember to change spelling of all words in the article where there are differences between US/British. For example, if the tapaculo is moved to US spelling, the word grey within the article should be changed to gray. Neither the tapaculo nor the rush tyrant are found in USA/Britain, so they could go either way and I would suggest following IOC. Both the flycatcher and the kingbird have large parts of their distributions in USA, so I would suggest both these use US spelling (MOS:TIES). Although this deviates from IOC spelling, I still think it essentially follows IOC because of their statement on this matter: "We encourage each author and publisher to select whatever spelling of these words deemed appropriate." For the record, IOC have a comparable statement on the use of accents, cedilla and alike.
Both the spelling "Cachalote" and "Cacholote" are in use. I see no compelling reason to deviate from IOC spelling in this case. • Rabo³ • 11:40, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Although I'd agree with most of what Rabo says, having part of the range in the US isn't a sufficient reason to use US English. For example, The Kingbird only just reaches the extreme SE US, but occurs throughout the mainly BE West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:07, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Gray Kingbird map & American Gray Flycatcher map. Exactly how much is deemed sufficient: 20%, 50%, 75% (of course not relevant for species found in both USA and Britain)? I think both make the cut, but I'll leave the final judgement to others. Using Jimfbleak's range requirements (sorry if I misinterpret your post), there would be relatively few US birds that make the cut, and extremely few British birds would make the cut. Virtually all birds found in Britain have a far larger part of their range on the Eurasian mainland (where English isn't the spoken language, i.e. the English/US spelling discussion is irrelevant). Regardless, one could also quote the final two sentences in MOS:RETAIN. • Rabo³ • 12:31, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Missed the "BE" = British English. The major parts of the Caribbean are Spanish or French (=irrelevant to this discussion). The only relatively large nation in the Caribbean with BE is Jamaica, an island that is about 1/6 the size of Florida and with about 1/7 the population. Other Caribbean nations that use BE are so tiny that they would not result in any major changes to these figures, even if all were combined. Comparably, the US Virgin Islands wouldn't result in any major change, while Puerto Rico (US English) is about the same size as Jamaica and has about 1½ times the population. • Rabo³ • 13:06, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
English is the official language of Belize. Snowman (talk) 13:13, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
True, but my previous reply was primarily aimed at the statement on the Caribbean being British Eng. Belize has a Caribbean coast, but it still isn't considered a Caribbean Nation using the most common definition. The Gray Kingbird is only an uncommon/rare transient in far northeastern Belize (per Howell and Web, A Guide to Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America). • Rabo³ • 13:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
I am not sure if Belize is an area of UK or US English. I hope that this IOC and en-Wiki English bird name comparison will help to clean-up the database of en Wiki page names. We might need to think out-of-the-box to find some answers to long-running issues with page names. Thank you for putting the "#"s on the list. I hope to have a bigger list in a few days time. Snowman (talk) 13:33, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Belize is British Eng. • Rabo³ • 13:36, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
  • I have ran lots of Perl scripts with AWB, but this was the first task that I had used AWB in the pre-parse mode (it does not do any editing). I accidentally got some of the AWB settings wrong in pre-parse mode in such a way that there are a few omissions. My script just scans the Wiki pages and finds out what is there and compares names with IOC names. Duplicates may also be possible in the trial runs above, because sometimes redirects (ie for a monotypic genus) lead the script to a species page a second time. I think it is better to leave redirects in and then removed duplicates from the final output list to avoid possible omissions. In-the-round, I think that my script works and I will run it on over 14,000 ornithology Wiki pages soon. I estimate that if I run it at night and restart it the next night, it will take about two or three nights and I might have a list for all the Wiki ornithology pages ready about Sunday or Monday next at the latest. I might be able to make the script a bit more efficient (and miss out some testing features); nevertheless, it takes a little while to download the information on each Wiki page. Snowman (talk) 13:00, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Looks like it could be worthwhile to have a run through. Most of the Parrots listed that need to be changed are extinct species. A couple of others look like a clean up may be in order (i.e. Echo Parakeet). Also need to be watched are IOC names where Wikipedia has decided to keep an alternate name (i.e African Grey Parrot, Blue-fronted Amazon). Many of those should be tagged with an IOC name exception on the talk page(at least for the species I've done so far), and should be left unless you'd like to start a lively discussion (I've received pushback from other editors).....Also worthwhile to discuss(?) are species which are shared in Canada and the US-Gray Jay comes to mind for example (do we use Grey Jay or Gray Jay?)....I'd also be real careful of species splits. For example, the IOC is the only tax group recognizing Eastern Woodhaunter as a distinct species, so I left it as a subspecies redirect to the Striped Woodhaunter. There are many more similar cases. I know a few of us had some discussions sround what to split and what not to......Pvmoutside (talk) 15:20, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
At the present time I am concentrating on making lists, which I am hoping will be useful for other automated tasks. From the lists it is obvious that some Wiki articles would benefit from a page move; however, many other page moves are complicated by taxonomy issues or controversy. When I have the full list, it might be easier to achieve a consensus on what to do. Have you spotted any incorrect page names due to typos yet? I was surprised that the Echo Parakeet popped-up on the list. I am not going to move the articles on African Grey Parrot or Blue-fronted Amazon and I am not going to start a discussion about renaming these two parrot articles, which I think have appropriate page names on en-Wiki. I have made minor amendments to the script and AWB settings and the script has started to scan over 14,000 ornithology pages found in bird classification Wiki categories, which I hope includes all the species pages on the Wiki. Duplications can easily be removed from the script's final list. I am still not sure what errors or omissions the script might make or if the Wiki category system is faulty; however, I have just coded for a new log-file, from which I hope to be able to count the number of species pages it scans. Snowman (talk) 15:50, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
So Echo Parakeet seems to be particularly confusing. The latin name Psittacula echo seems to suggest Echo Parakeet as an alternate name to the Mauritius Parakeet of which we have an article,and where Echo Parkeet is currently considered as an alternate name. None of the tax authorities except the IOC (which we have not yet accepted as a tax authority) list the Echo Parakeet (Psittacula eques) as an existing species. The Réunion Parakeet Psittacula eques eques is lised in a separate article. It is an extinct species/subspecies not referenced anywhere except the IOC or Wikipedia. Clements, Howard & Moore, Zoonomen all have no listing. My guess is Echo Parakeet should be reserved as an alternate name for Mauritius Parakeet, and the former Psittacula eques (current Echo Parakeet article) should be merged into the Reunion Parakeet article, with an explanation the confusion of taxonomy there?Pvmoutside (talk) 20:54, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
  • My script has found pages for 9362 binomial names on the Wiki and this includes some extinct species. Should there be more than this? I plan to do some checks, because there do not seem to be enough to me. IOC have 10596 species (including extinct species) in their spreadsheet (ver 3.1). I do not know what the problem is. Any comments? Ideally, I need to sort this out before listing my script's results here. Snowman (talk) 09:22, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
could be a couple that I know off the top (I'm sure there are others): Some are lacking a category I'm sure, but the IOC species pages should not match the number of species pages we have since we do not standardize with the IOC for taxonomy.....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:56, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Incomplete categorisation on bird articles: I have just found Yellow-browed Bulbul, a species page that did not have a category relating to taxonomy, so this would not have been found in Bird Classification directories, which my bot looked at. It only appeared in categories about bird locations. I have just added a taxonomy category. Snowman (talk) 16:55, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
  • I have made one of the regexes more inclusive and added another log file to my script. I used my amended script to scan the "Birds" category. I found that it runs more quickly with settings for minimal processing by AWB in pre-append mode and it did the scan overnight. If I do not become too busy if real life, then I hope to have something to show soon. I need to do a little more testing and think how to present various lists. After this, I might be able to made a spreadsheets of all the Wiki's bird species pages and perhaps bird genus pages. Snowman (talk) 20:54, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Bird name topics

  • What words are used in bird names that are different in US and UK English? I am aware of grey-gray, and colour-color. Are there any more? I hope to put them all in a separate list. Snowman (talk)
If you mean names, rather than just spellings, there are the loons/divers and skuas/jaegers, although I think we're pretty stable on those now Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:30, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Somber-sombre. Interestingly (to me), the AOU uses "mitred", "ochre", "sabre", and "sulphur", but no doubt some Americans use "er" versions and "sulfur". (I assume you're talking about spelling variations, not things like loon-diver.) JerryFriedman (Talk) 18:36, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
OK, I searched for "mitred", "ochre", "sabre", "sulphur", "loons/divers" and "skuas/jaegers" as well in my provisional list, but I did not find any IOC / Wiki differences due to these UK-US English word/spelling differences. Snowman (talk) 18:50, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Has "Island" been removed from IOC names? Snowman (talk) 18:46, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Many, but not where it would be confusing, as in Inaccessible Island Finch (though I suppose the finch is pretty inaccessible, come to think of it). —JerryFriedman (Talk) 19:54, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
You could search Avibase for "island" and "saint". —JerryFriedman (Talk) 18:36, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
I am working on IOC names and Wiki-page names, so I have not searched Avibase. Is "St." used rather than "Saint"? Snowman (talk) 18:46, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Echo Parakeet

I've did my best to fix Réunion Parakeet and Mauritius Parakeet to prevailing taxonomy. I've merged any worthwhile information for Echo Parakeet into both species. Echo Parakeet can now be merged into a redirect for Mauritius Parakeet.....Pvmoutside (talk) 13:36, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Monsieur "Carnation-of-the-walls"

Seems to be a possible error at Marc A. P. O. Des Murs which should be Marc A. P. Oeillet des Murs? Error carried over from fr.wp / to fr.wp here. Could someone else have a look please. Library of Congress: NO 0026310 Mon. Oeillet des Murs, Marc Athanase Parfait, b. 1804. Iconographie omíthologique; nouveau recueil général de planches peintes d'oiseaux, In ictu oculi (talk) 11:44, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

It's "M. O. Des Murs" on this title page, although in the Google Books metadata he's "Marc Athanase P. Oeillet Desmurs". Certainly "Oeillet Des Murs" makes the most sense, and he's often been referred to that way. Could "O. Des Murs" be an abbreviation for that, like the Spanish "C. de Baca" for the surname "Cabeza de Baca"? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 16:30, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
He's "O. des Murs" on the title page and "P. O. des Murs" in the dedication of the Iconographie Ornthologique. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 16:38, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
While I'm at it, there seems to have been disagreement during his time. This treats Œillet des Murs as his surname, while all the references to his contribution to the Encyclopédie d'histoire naturelle call him "M. Des Murs". In his Traité général d'oologie ornithologique he's "O. Des Murs" again, and likewise in Leçons élémentaires sur l'histoire naturelle des oiseaux (scroll up two pages) and La fauconnerie, ancienne et moderne. However, his second given name seems to have been "Athanase", not "Athanese" as in our article. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 20:03, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. The de.wp article records his father being Jacques Oeillet des/Des Murs, but if it is a surname it is very rare. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:14, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for doing the move. For the start of his surname, I've made some comments at the talk page. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 03:28, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

List of bird conservation groups and websites

Please help if you want just put in chat what it is before puting it in so I can give permisson. Also it can only be the name not a link or wikipidea will delete the page because it says I'm breaking some rule. I will probaly get back to you almost everyday except saturday and sunday. Please add some more languges to it under a new section with what the name of the languge is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bird_conservation_groups_and_websites Nhog (talk) 17:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

automatic Taxobox and speciesbox

I added automatic Taxobox to Struthio and speciesbox to Struthio copperensi and also created all the taxonomy pages, ie struthionidae, struthio, and all the species ones. I am still getting an error can someone help me out. I have been out of Wikipedia for a bit and the taxobox's changing is the big thing. speednat (talk) 05:27, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Is this like having a taxonomy system imposed on WP Birds? Which taxonomy is used by automatic taxoboxes? Snowman (talk) 18:51, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Whichever one is created. An entry is made linking to the parent group. Then when you use <automatic taxobox> it links them all together and displays the amount that you tell it to. speednat (talk) 18:58, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
There are about 50 to 100 templates (click the edit tab and see the long list of protected templates) involved in rendering one taxobox and all of them are protected. Is this against the general principal that anyone can edit the Wiki? I do not think that WP Birds could use automatic taxoboxes without knowing what taxonomy system the automatic taxoboxes use. The Wiki aims to use the best evidence for its taxonomy. Snowman (talk) 19:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Re: current automatic taxobox on Struthio coppensi, a bird that became extinct in the Miocene. The taxobox says that this in on the IUCN red list, which is ridiculous. Snowman (talk) 19:13, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
There should probably be an open discussion in the our wikiproject then, because they are being changed to the automatic, not by me of course (except 1), but I only know about them because of what I have seen thus far in Birds.speednat (talk) 19:29, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps, I have missed something. Where is the discussion about the application of automatic taxoboxes to ornithology? Snowman (talk) 19:56, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
See Template:Automatic taxobox I note that it says that the documentation is under construction. I presume automatic taxoboxes are not ready for roll-out. Snowman (talk) 17:49, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
Head over here [1] and you can see the superlist of created taxonomy templates. This is the important part. This is what decides whether we use clades or not, whether ratitae exists. Not the post creation linking. So if we as a wikiproject want to debate and/or get involved, the time has past.speednat (talk) 19:49, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
There are no templates in that list. That is a number of pages that begin with the word "Taxonomy". To me is seems that automatic taxoboxes are a concept for Wiki bird pages that has a few "experimental" examples only and it has not got of the ground. Snowman (talk) 21:23, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Problem taxonomy (likely to be due to errors or ambiguity on the Wiki)

So a few different issues here from my perspective:
  • The Eastern Great Egret and the Kumlein's Gull read well (both currently considered subspecies).
  • The Puna Ibis and Plegadis paganus have different scientific names so it looks OK as well.
  • The Rock Dove, Helmeted Guineafowl, and Wild Turkey deal with domestication. I'll leave it up to consensus whether to merge the domesticated articles into the wild species counterparts under a Domestication header. I suppose a more comprehensive discussion then needs to be made regarding Timber Wolf and Dog, Red Junglefowl and Chicken, etc.....
  • I am not suggesting that the articles be merged. I think the problem is that these domesticated bird articles have a species taxoboxes. I think that there should only be one species taxobox per species on the Wiki. Should they have a farm animal infobox? Dog and Chicken have subspecies taxoboxes. Snowman (talk) 15:38, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
....That's all I've had time for so far. I'll get to the others later.........Pvmoutside (talk) 13:30, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
I've fixed Eastern Great Egret (which bolded the species classification as though it was on Ardea alba not A. (a.) modesta) and Kumlien's Gull (same problem). Plegadis paganus is pretty clearly a mistake, and I've fixed it. With Papasula, there is a fossil species, humorously named costelloi, sometimes treated as a subspecies; I don't know whether we should treat it as one. —innotata 13:53, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
I think that has fixed the taxoboxes of Eastern Great Egret and Kumlien's Gull. They are now both subspecies taxoboxes. Snowman (talk) 15:52, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Dark-throated Thrush used to be considered a single species, Turdus ruficollis, with two subspecies, ''T. r. ruficollis and T. r. atrogularis. It is now commonly split as Red-throated Thrush, retained as T. ruficollis, and Black-throated Thrush T. atrogularis. We seem to be following both treatments simultaneously, need to decide whether to split or lump, but not both Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:35, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
What does the evidence indicate? Snowman (talk) 12:31, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
IOC and BOU both split, so I've made Black-throated a disamb Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:52, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
I fixed Teita Fiscal (which Pvmoutside had started on). It was just a spelling variation. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 16:12, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Can you give an example showing how thise "x" is used? I have just realised that domesticated animals have "status = DOM" in the infobox, so I could search for this to exclude these from species lists. Should they be included or excluded? Snowman (talk) 16:26, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Anas platyrhynchos × strepera for intrageneric hybrids, Anas platyrhynchos × Branta canadensis for intergeneric hybrids. Not sure how they fit in the ICZN &c. —innotata 15:33, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Neither has been resolved, and while we're at it, Black-throated Saltator isn't a Saltator either (unless that genus in broadened). For the flowerpecker, I do wish people would refrain from starting pages on presumed new species until they have been formally described, but I guess you can write something (although labelled with a lot of uncertainty) when someone published something on it. I have redirected Eastern Striped Manakin to Striped Manakin. Striped can be split into Eastern and Western, but if people want to do this... at least they should get the facts right (contrary to the earlier version of Eastern, it has not been rated by the IUCN [only combined Eastern+Western have been rated], and it is endemic to the Atlantic Forest in Brazil). Of all the novel splits proposed by the IOC, this is one with a relatively large amount of insecurity over its validity, though personally I think it's valid. This contrasts to several other novel IOC splits where good published quantitative data may be lacking, but *anyone* with a reasonable level of experiance with the taxa know they certainly deserve to be split. This includes e.g. the Western/Eastern Woodhaunter split (cf.SACC). • Rabo³ • 14:00, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Snow, if the question for the Spectacled FP is simply one of knowing the genus, it is an easy call. If confirmed as a good species, it will certainly be a Dicaeum. However, I have not seen as yet a proposal for a specific epithet.Steve Pryor (talk) 16:14, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I was just wondering if the genus could be written in the infobox, but without me knowing any literature on this topic, I think that it is better that I did not write this update to the species page infobox. Snowman (talk) 09:29, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
The dilemna for me is when to decide a bird gets a species page. Some are more viable than others as has aready been pointed out. In the case of the Woodhaunters, it looks like that does deserve a page eventually, but the evidence shown here is only a proposal at the SACC, and has yet to be fully accepted. It was explained to me all we need is a backing source in order to decide whether to create or lump a page. Yellow-rumped Warbler shows contrary evidence to split and lump. Evidence exists to split Yellow-rumped Warbler into Myrtle and Audubon's Warbler, but the AOU and other tax authorities have had issues with the sourcing, so they have rejected the study. There currently is evidence to split Barred Owl, but again, there is doubt the evidence is substantial enough to warrant a split. When we discussed when to split a species, I believe Steve Pryor suggested we wait until Howard & Moore gets published, but when asked for the publication date, he suggested January, but it is now June. The project has not even accepted Howard and Moore as the taxonomical standard. In fact, the project has not standardized on any one source for taxonomy as we have English names, which is then set up for controversies. I've been taking a conservative approach and only adding/changing information when there is agreement among multiple sources (i.e. created Andean Teal, Black-bibbed Tit). Perhaps a more comprehensive standardization model can be discussed for taxonomy moving forward....Pvmoutside (talk) 20:27, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Pvmoutside, I have firmer information, finally I must add, about the HM 4°. It will be published in two volumes. The first (and there is a pre-publication offer but you have to get on their list, and which closes August 26 this year). The first volume will deal only with Non-Passerines, it is slated for publication in early October this year, it will cost 60 GBP (if taking advantage of the pre-pub offer), and will be approximately 550 pages. The second volume will deal with the Passerines, and will be out approximately in June, 2013 - same price, ca. 760 pp.. It should be noted, and I have a long letter from Frank Gill, that the IOC has modified their original intent (i.e. strictly dealing with English Common Names) and that they intend to evolve the list into a bona fide published tax list. I am not sure when they will publish a revised volume. If this comes to pass, they would be a competing list to the HM. Excuse me if I do not mention the Clements. I simply consider it a lightweight in comparision to the two aforementioned lists.Steve Pryor (talk) 21:00, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Feel free Snowman!....Pvmoutside (talk) 00:56, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I will re-phrase my question. Has more information become available that might enable the Barolo Shearwater to be allotted to a genus? Snowman (talk) 13:47, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Capitalization

Administrator assistance needed to move Blue-and-white flycatcher to Blue-and-white Flycatcher. Snowman (talk) 17:05, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Casuariidae & Dromaiidae

I am attempting to reconcile the joined families of Casuariidae and Dromaiidae; however I can't. All the info I have is showing that they split at Casuariiformes. Birdlife International, Tolweb.com, Taxonomicon.taxonomy.nl, Clements Checklist, shall I keep on, and I can find Nothing with a captial N stating the other. In addition, the article has no references backing that statement up. So I am going to place a Dubious tag on it. And I am suggesting that the article in question gets changed and moved to Casuariiformes, and the articles Dromaiidae gets created. speednat (talk) 23:17, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

This is confusing. Palaeognathae states that the primary classification is Struthioniformes, Rheiformes, Casuariiformes, Apterygiformes, Tinamiformes

and the secondary classification (meaning I assume that the less popular version) is Struthioniformes and Tinamiformes.

However if you go to the Struthioniformes page it states Struthionidae, Rheidae, Casuariidae, †Aepyornithidae, Dinornithidae, Apterygidae as its children.

There are discrepancies across our pages and I may not have the most recent info at my fingertips. If I was to do anything, I would probably use ITIS.gov or something which states that they are all part of the same order - Struthioniformes.speednat (talk) 23:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I see your issue. Since it appears the Cassowaries (Casuariidae) and the Emu (Dromaiidae) are distinct families (Clements, Zoonomen, H & M, etc, probably the best thing to do to the family article is to merge all the appropriate Cassowary family info into Cassowary, move all the appropriate Emu info into the Emu article, then make Casuariidae a redirect to Cassowary, and Dromaiidae a redirect to Emu. Also needed is a link on the Struthioniformes page to the Dromaiidae. Any objections?.....Pvmoutside (talk) 00:36, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I started making the move of Casuariidae to Casuariiformes and changing the article to match that it was an article about an order instead of a family, but otherwise the same. However I then realized that disagrees with the main premise of the Ratite article that they are all members of Struthioniformes and there is no Casuariiformes. Here is a rundown of my research

Clements and ITIS.gov agree wholeheartedly

  • Struthioniformes
    • Apterygidae
    • Casuariidae
    • Dromaiidae
    • Rheidae
    • Struthionidae

Next is Tolweb.com which doesn't really name the groups but it goes like this

  • Ostriches
  • The Rest
    • Tinamous
    • Rheas
    • The rest
      • Kiwis
      • Emus
      • Cassowaries

Zoonomen.com

  • Struthioniformes
  • Rheiformes
  • Tinamiformes
  • Apterygiformes
  • Casuariformes
    • Casuriidae
    • Dromaiidae

Finally Taxonomicon.taxonomy.nl They seem extreme, although keep in mind that they also deal with extinct species.

  • Palaeognathae
    • Lithornithiformes
    • Crypturi
      • Dromaeomorphae
        • Tinamiformes
    • Ratitae
      • Apterygimorphae
        • Apterygiformes
        • Dinornithiformes
      • Casuariimorphae
        • Casuariformes
          • Casuariidae
          • Dromaidae
      • Struthionimorphae
        • Aepyornithiformes
        • Struthioniformes
          • Struthioni
            • Eleutherornithidae
            • Palaeothithidae
            • Struthionidae
          • Rheae

IF that is not confusing enough. So generally there is nothing close to a consensus, although I think what Taxonomicon is trying to do is separate out the tinamous early and be more detailed than any other. Also, all but ITIS and Clements are keeping Cassowaries and Emus together for one taxon more than the others. speednat (talk) 04:02, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I thought about changing back what I did with Casuariidae and Casuariformes but we can always change it back later, I am going to think about it overnight and would love to hear what other people have to say. speednat (talk) 04:04, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Zoonomen is a list of authorities and it is not a taxonomy list. As far as I am aware, ITIS is not used for birds here (not sure why not) and Clements is an older system. I have not heard about the other websties quoted above. As with parrots, perhaps classification will become clearer after more DNA research and it is too early to make a lot of changes here now. Whatever changes are made to the Wiki should be based on verifiable and reliable evidence. I think erudite ornithology assistance is needed just in case this discussion leads to a lot of edits that are based on unsuitable or inconsistent sources. Snowman (talk) 09:28, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Locked pages VIII

Next installment in locked pages. Some of these are on Snowmanradio's list.......Most are capitalization issues with a few exceptions.

..........Pvmoutside (talk) 23:57, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I've finished the last few Wren-Babblers for you... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:31, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Jim and Kurt....Pvmoutside (talk) 00:14, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Collaboration and peer review

There are a couple of articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Peer review, and pelican is probably not too far off a GA nomination and possible pass, so might be time to think of what would be a good next collaboration - check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Collaboration everyone. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:49, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Long list

Is it worth making a WP Birds Project subpage for a list of about 9000 en Wiki bird articles where the Common name and the binomial name in the article are both the same as IOC Common and binomial names? It might be useful, because "what links here" will show a link where relevant. I have the print out, but it might not be 100% complete for a variety of reasons, perhaps about 95%. I do not know the final count (about 8800 to 9000), because there are a few more in other print outs to add on or I'll write a few lines of code for the articles ending in "(bird)". It will be similar (but about 10 times longer) than Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Comparison of IOC and Wiki binomial names (June 2012), which is a list where the binomial name is different on en Wiki and IOC. Snowman (talk) 22:26, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Images on Flickr

I've noticed some project members uploading some Flickr images not attributed to them. I know photos taken when on govt. assignments qualify, as do photos older than 150 years can be uploaded, but some photos with some rights reserved are also uploaded. Can this creative commons tag qualify?: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).....I've found some images if that is the case......I know we can't if all rights are reserved. And do I need to care if the author chages his creative commons license after I upload?...Pvmoutside (talk) 15:57, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Only PD, CC-BY, and CC-BY-SA images are OK; Creative Commons licenses can not be revoked. For more info and links to tools for uploading images, take a look at commons:Commons:Flickr files. —innotata 16:02, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, images uploaded to Commons must have copyright to be distributed commercially and also they must allow derivatives. You must have the flickr licence checked by a trusted user by putting {{flickrreview}} on the uploaded file. The uploader does not have to be the author, but the images uploaded must be given an appropriate copyright licence by the author to be suitable for upload to Commons. Once the licence has been checked another tag will be put on the image to confirm the Flickr licence, and after that it does not matter if the Flickr user changes the licence or deletes it because Creative Commons licences are non-redeemable. Put {{Flickr-change-of-license}} (or {{Picasa-change-of-license}}), which will explain that the copyright of the image on Flickr has been changed and that it originally had licence that was suitable for Commons. Snowman (talk) 21:24, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the information.......I'll comb through North America little by little.....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:49, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Here is an image on Commons with a {{Flickr-change-of-license}} template; see File:Amazona festiva bodini -two in aviary-8a.jpg. On Flickr you can see that the Flickr photographer has deleted the image from Flickr. Snowman (talk) 10:40, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Crested Shrike-tit or Crested Shriketit

This has been moved between these two names a number of times. Its IOC name is Crested Shriketit. The move to its IOC name appears to be controversial. Any comments? Snowman (talk) 22:50, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I moved this a while back as part of one of Pvmoutside's periodic requests for IOC name-related page moves, only for User:Bidgee to disagree and move it back the same day (along with a handful of other articles I'd moved at the same time, IIRC). I'd say that this qualifies the move as controversial. I'd take it to WP:RM and go through the full process, TBH. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:57, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Previous discussion of this issue is here, FWIW. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:07, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
All of locked pages with the exception of the shriketit look stable. When Bidgee originally argued his case, I left his move intact and tagged with IOC name exception. Arguing over a hyphen (or lack of one) better left for another day....Pvmoutside (talk) 00:09, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
I have started a discussion about a possible page move to the IOC name at Talk:Crested Shrike-tit. Snowman (talk) 11:10, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Suffix on bird names

List of birds with "(bird)" as suffix. It is not always easy to know what is the primary topic, and moves might be controversial. Are there any worth looking at to see if the primary topic is at the bird. Snowman (talk) 23:34, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

This is a list of bird species. There are more suffixes for genera and extinct birds. Snowman (talk) 11:59, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Snowman (talk) 23:34, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

With most of these, the ambiguity is coincidental (Mao, Sora, most of the others), or the bird is derived from the main meaning (Rifleman, Redhead). The only one that I think may be arguable is the swallow. Although there is a long list on the Golden Swallow disamb page, only one, an obscure Chinese film, has an actual article Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:38, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Are Red Owl stores really more notable than the bird species? I've never heard of the chain (or what appears to be left of it), but then again, there's no particular reason why I would have. Any United Statesians able to comment? Also - the River Tern, a more popular topic than the River Tern, would you say? I suppose that I *could* look at the pageview stats... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 07:31, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Good points, KSB, I agree that the Shropshire River is much less notable than the Indian bird, that would be justifiable as a move to primary name. I don't know if the Red Owl stores either, but that seems at least another where the bird may be more notable Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:10, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Page counts so far this June using this tool: "River Tern (bird)" = 318 hits; "River Tern" =172 hits. Neither terns are primary pages. Both terns have many listed in "what links here", so they would not be easy to move. However, could claim WP:Recentism for moving "Red Owl", so I have started a discussion about a possible move on Talk:Red Owl. Snowman (talk) 10:21, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
I would move Red Owl to Red Owl (Store) and create Red Owl as disambiguation --Melly42 (talk) 12:22, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
"Red Owl (store)", with the "s" in store in lower-case, might be better. Please comment in the move discussion on Talk:Red Owl. Snowman (talk) 12:29, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Two locked pages

Can someone move a couple of locked pages? Normally I wait and save them until I have a section completed, but these two are particularly confusing.

Thanks!....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:19, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay mate, I've done those now... :) --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 21:32, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Laughingthrushes

I'm currently at the Garrulax laughingthrushes and notice there has been some work on creating new genus splits. I know the area I am in right now is in a huge state of flux with new families propsed, new genera proposed, and movement of species from one genus to another. So my question is, should I revert back the new genus work, in this case from Leucodioptron back to Garrulax? Looks like HBW is the only one recognizing the new genus Leucodioptron, everyone else (Clements, H & M, etc.) still with Garrulax. My preference is to revert to Garrulax until there is more consensus. I'll leave the proposed new genera splits (for now) on the general Laughingthrush page.....Any comments?....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:15, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Diet of frogs

Our friendly neighbourhood vandal's latest wheeze is changing the iucn status without an edit summary or reference, the usual stuff intended to waste our time checking. As always, I've reverted all edits by this user on sight, and blocked the current isp at 86.46.247.180. No doubt he'll be back soon from another address Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:51, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Some of his edits that I saw last night were correct (I checked them on http://www.iucnredlist.org/ - which has recently been updated for 2012), e.g. on Festive Amazon and Yellow-naped Amazon. Is he doing a mixture of good/bad? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 13:07, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Surnames in bird names

Which is the correct spelling? IOC and Wiki have different capitalisation after "Mac" in the following bird names: Snowman (talk) 13:47, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Snowman (talk) 13:47, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Update: the cuckoo-dove is now at MacKinlay's Cuckoo-Dove. Snowman (talk) 20:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Whose Bird? gives Mackinlay and MacQueen. —innotata 20:23, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I think that the Wiki uses accents as used in peoples names. Difficult to type accents appear as "?"s in the print out. Should the following files be moved? Snowman (talk) 13:05, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Snowman (talk) 13:21, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

I've moved Böhm's Flycatcher, Fülleborn's Boubou, and Sjöstedt's Barred Owlet (Boehm is used rather commonly, but I don't think the others are, especially for the people they're named after). An admin needs to move the chat to Rüppell's Robin-Chat (pretty sure this is the normal version, and all the other birds named after him have the umlaut in their article titles). —innotata 22:27, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Done, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:30, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Different binomial names between IOC and Wiki for same common name

See: Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Comparison of IOC and Wiki binomial names (June 2012).


Most are where a different taxonomic view is taken. Some of the -us/-a ending differences may be where the gender of the word has changed, as with Delichon urbicum recently becoming D. urbica. The following are ones where I think there is a spelling error, and which I believe to be correct.

  • Madagascar Partridge — wiki
  • Palau Owl — ioc
  • Seychelles Kestrel — wiki
  • White-winged Chough — ioc
  • Grey-headed Fish Eagle — wiki
  • Mountain Hawk-Eagle — ioc
  • Daurian Partridge — ioc

Sephanoides sephaniodes looks as if it should be wrong, but I don't think it is Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:14, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

  • I am not entirely sure if you are indicating the correct version or the incorrect version. What in-line referencing or footnotes are needed, when the Wiki binomial is thought to be correct and it is different to the IOC binomial. Snowman (talk) 17:30, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
  • The one I've listed is the one that I believe to be the correct version. I've mainly looked at usage in RS sources like BirdLife, although some, like, like the owl, look improbable anyway. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:54, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Is there an up-to-date list of binomial name spellings anywhere? How are gender differences recognised? What are the spelling rules about gender in binomial names? If gender differences are thought easy to correct, I might attempt to generate a shorter print-out that includes only gender spelling differences. Snowman (talk) 17:09, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
In re only Sephanoides. The spelling of the specific epithet as "sephaniodes" appears to be a misspelling, however, it risks remaining in the hunt because of it having entered into common usage. Until there is a specific decision in merit by the ICZN this will not be resolved. In order then to your questions of the above paragraph: First, the question of calling this or that list "up-to-date" is probably wishful thinking. There is more than one list, all touted by their respective redactors as being up-to-date, and still they differ in certain instances, and they differ when there are differences of nomenclatural interpretation in the ICZN protocols that may be cogent from case to case. Second, gender differences normally depend on the determination of the gender of the generic name, however, this determination is often not intuitive. If correct gender assignment is possible for the generic name, there are then sometimes cases of non-conformation of the specific epithets because of the nature of the specific epithet itself. These differences can be understood most of the time by going through the ICZN protocols, however, they are usually very arcane and abstruse! This is stuff that I usually leave to those academics that are immersed in this subject matter. Third, save yourself the time, and don't attempt the generation of a list of gender differences - because of the esoteric nature of the subject I would consider such an attempt a waste of time as the ICZN protocols invoked are several and a generation of such a list would lead only to a restatement of treatments at times not intuitive that you would attempt to resolve by the generation of such a list.Steve Pryor (talk) 05:41, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Usually the gender change is because someone has checked the derivation, and found that the gender of the species does not agree with that of the genus. this includes a number of examples, such as the Egyptian Goose in your list, and incidentally justifies the Corn Bunting move to Emberiza Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:54, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Apart from the spelling/gender issues, the majority are changing views on taxonomy. We could either consider case-by-case, or accept/reject the ioc names wholesale. The main thing is to have consistency across other articles in the same genus, although many of these are moving the whole genus anyway. We have just moved all the parulids, so I suspect we will go with the ioc Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:54, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
With erudite help I would like to at least look at the "low-hanging-fruit" to see if there are any easy or obvious binomial names in taxoboxes to change. I note that Commons and en Wiki frequently use a different spelling of the binomial, so there might be clear benefits to the Wiki to do this. Taxonomy differences will need deep analysis to sort out, but accidental spelling mistakes and some gender differences might be easier to amend. I plan to do a print-out of the binomial names that differ between the en Wiki and IOC name by one letter (and perhaps another print-out when two or three letters are different). Perhaps, the list sizes will be more manageable. Snowman (talk) 08:49, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I could easily put the changes explained in Taxonomic recommendations for British birds: second report (see link above) in AWB to update the Wiki articles. Is there a first report? Snowman (talk) 09:01, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
  • I am wondering if it is worth having a special field in the taxobox that indicates that the classification of a taxon is considered to be a species by some authorities and a sub-species by other authorities. The taxobox (or additional taxobox) could even state how a number of authorities have classified a particular taxon. Music articles have an additional taxobox for review scores (see Secondhand Daylight) and perhaps controversial taxa could have an additional taxobox for the opinions of a number of authorities. Snowman (talk) 17:30, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
Seems unnecessarily complicated, better to do in article text Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:54, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Snowman that can be covered in the "synonyms" parameter, such as is the case with the Silver-backed Butcherbird. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:09, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
The butcherbird taxobox looks like a standard species taxobox to me. A synonym does not necessarily imply taxonomy controversy. I thought that most synonyms were due to out-of-date taxonomy or re-naming. Snowman (talk) 19:21, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
The current taxoboxes are suitable when there is relative certainty about a taxon. However, it is not obvious from taxoboxes that there is controversy about a taxon, so taxoboxes can give the wrong impression, which I think is extremely un-encyclopaedic. Are there any other ways for a taxobox to summarise or indicate controversy about a taxon? Perhaps, it would be interesting for the "collaboration of the month" (or whatever it is called now) to focus on a controversial taxa to see what problems are encountered and what solutions are found. Snowman (talk) 08:49, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
  • There are a lot of sunbirds on the list. Why is this? Snowman (talk) 09:17, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
  • IOC have 10596 bird species on their spreadsheet 3.1. BirdLife have 10064 (or 10062 depending on where you look). Any comments? Snowman (talk) 09:57, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Over the past year as you know I've been slowly working through the bird taxonomy making changes to the IOC english names and here and there adding/changing species, etc. if there is consensus among the major publishers (Clements, Howard & Moore, etc). I've been very conservative with the approach advised by a few to be that way until at least Howard and Moore gets published, which still is a way off? I am now at Laughingthrushes. Looks like the entire Babbler taxonomy needs a redo (including adding some families), but I'm leaving it for now given all the taxonomic uncertainty from recent publications. Not sure if this helps further the discussion , or further opens the proverbial can of worms.....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:07, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
  • And by the way, more changes are due by the AOU and are coming soon (August?) looks like Gray Hawk and Xantus's Murrelet are getting split at minimum......Pvmoutside (talk) 15:16, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Birds for identification (145)

Confirmed. Shyamal (talk) 12:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Identification is right. Shyamal (talk) 11:58, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Fire-eyed Diucon. MeegsC | Talk 06:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Moved to File:Xolmis pyrope -Los Glaciares National Park, Santa Cruz province, Argentina-8.jpg on Commons. Snowman (talk) 06:51, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Chimango Caracara. MeegsC | Talk 06:14, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Moved to File:Milvago chimango -Tierra del Fuego National Park, Argentina-8.jpg on Commons. Snowman (talk) 06:51, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Waterfowl, yes, but not really a duck. White-faced Whistling-duck. Natureguy1980 (talk) 16:35, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Moved to File:Dendrocygna viduata -London Zoo, England-8a.jpg on Commons. Snowman (talk) 17:37, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

New African Grey Parrot split

Thoughts on this, fellas? It seems to have recently been decided that the Timneh African Grey Parrot is a distinct species, Psittacus timneh. Any thoughts on whether the TAG should have its own separate article yet? If so, what should it be called, considering that we're not currently using the IOC name for the (Congo) African Grey Parrot? The Birdlife International link uses 'Grey Parrot' and 'Timneh Parrot', for the record. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:20, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Just by looking at them, I always thought that they are two different species. However, I am not sure what the current literature says. Snowman (talk) 22:31, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
So now we have IUCN Redlist entries for Psittacus erithacus and Psittacus timneh, far what it's worth... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:27, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
Have started page at Timneh Parrot, leaving it as subspecies for now. If we go with it as full species I suggest keeping African Grey Parrot as the genus page, with most of the avicultural stuff, and starting a new page for Congo Parrot (or Congo Grey Parrot). Maias (talk) 05:22, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Looking on Commons, it would seem that all the high-resolution, well-composed photos of TAGs feature fairly scraggy-looking birds. Does anyone here have access to this species to get a better pic? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Hawaiian language

The accents used in the Hawaiian language are not very well known globally; see ioc spelling rules. The pronunciation is usually in the first line of the article, so why put little-known pronunciation aids for the Hawaiian language in the title of bird species pages. I think that all the Hawaiian accents should be removed from Wiki pages names. Difficult to type pronunciation aids appear as "?"s in the list. Please note there may be some articles of extinct birds, which may not have be included on the IOC list, and may not appear on the following comparison of Wiki and IOC names. Snowman (talk) 12:52, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Snowman (talk) 12:52, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

They're ʻokinas, letters for glottal stops, not accents, so their omission is rather different from that of accents. And of course, they're at least widely written with the ʻokinas, probably very commonly in Hawaii, and for some non-Hawaiian names were previously used. —innotata 21:51, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
The 'okina is not merely a "pronunciation guide". It's a letter in its own right. And IOC's own guidelines say, I'm praphrasing, to use "diacriticial marks when desired". So this is not contra-IOC, even though the 'okina is not technically a diacritic. The 'okina and macron should remain; they change the pronunciation of words, and they are now being used officially by the US government in Hawaiian place names. This trend will only get stronger: not weaker. Natureguy1980 (talk) 05:00, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Please excuse my ignorance about the Hawaiian language. Why are you not writing "Hawaiʻi" or "Hawaiʻian"? The people who are supporting the use of Hawaiian spelling and not even writing them in there comments above. IOC do not include these characters in their lists, so is they wrong? Snowman (talk) 08:28, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Hawaii is pretty widely spelled that way in English, and it's the official name; I've seen some people use Hawaii to refer to the state/archipelago and Hawaiʻi for the island reflecting official usage, even though they are the same in Hawaiian. —innotata 17:31, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Can Hawaiʻi Creeper be moved? The Wiki has Lanai for the name of the island, so can Lanaʻi Hookbill be moved. Snowman (talk) 20:37, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
No, it cannot. Neither can Lana'i Hookbill be moved. The main article on the island, however, should be. Why are you on a crusade to change these names? Natureguy1980 (talk) 16:20, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
The Wiki article on ʻokina indicates that it is in the Latin script, so based on this I think that the headings with the ʻokina are probably consistent with MOS. Is the use of the Hawaiian language in headings consistent en-Wiki MOS guidelines, which says; "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated."; see WP:UE? It does say "must be transliterated". Is the MoS compliant transliterated version of these Hawaiian bird names acutally the versions listed on the IOC website? Curiously, the ʻokina does not occur in the editing aids of Latin characters at the bottom of the editing screen? I have asked a question about use of the Hawaiian language at Wikipedia talk:Romanization and a question about the Latin character set at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). Snowman (talk) 19:48, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
The Hawaiʻi Creeper is named after the island, which is more commonly spelled with ʻokinas in English, as with all islands, so I don't see how the discussion would lead you to think this one in particular should be moved. As far as transliteration, Hawaiian is only written in Latin script. —innotata 16:05, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

talking turkey

Round 274 Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:51, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I do love how a 1983 op-ed piece in The Auk keeps getting trotted out as an "article". MeegsC | Talk 02:22, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Bird List pages

I know many regional bird list pages need some help with all the taxonomic changes that regularly occur. I've forked off the IOC species pages for about a month to try to update most (not all) of the changes in North and South America. So, as I've been going along, I've made these changes on the regional pags that people may want to comment on.

  • 1) Removing the Table of Contents and replacing with a pre-existing template. By changing to the template, it makes it easier to change, add and remove families instead of having to do it twice, and picks upany people may miss. It also takes up much less space on the edit pages. The downside is it's less compact and not centered on the actual page we see. Can't the template be tweaked to make it more compact and centered?

I do not know why you have been removing the table of contents from these pages, because they are meant to be there. You left "List of birds of Cuba" in a terrible state without the table of contents and many of the species tables were not rendering properly. Please go back and return the table of contents to the lists. Snowman (talk) 11:30, 25 June 2012 (UTC) Moved discussion from personal pages:

I think there probably needs to be some discussion. I think that while it is arguable whether the automatic TOC should be removed, there is no such argument for the specially written ones that are designed to be efficient navigation aids. See the FL List of birds of Thailand Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:27, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Please put back all the navigation aids that you have removed. Snowman (talk) 18:00, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
So a small point, looks like Snowmanradio prefers the compact style of the longform table of contents, which is fine. He brings up rendering issues in the Cuba list. Looks like those same issues occur without the template. The state of the list looks fine except for a couple of small typos which Snowman graciously fixed. Since the reversion, the Hispaniola, Dominican Republic and Haiti lists have now in the table of contents a bird which doesn't exist in the main body. The Grey Hipocolius TOC link doesn't work, as I changed the family info in the main body to Palmchat as is the current correct taxonomy. As mentioned previously, I have no interest in creating double work for myself, so Snowmanradio can be free to change the Table of Contents links as well. I think there are a couple of lists where I've added Fringillidae in the main body but there are no links to it now in the table of contents, so they will deadlink as well. I know there were some families (not many) that other folks missed that would have been picked up automatically that now are deadlinked, I can't remember what they were. Moving forward, I have no interest in typing in the family twice, once in the main body, the other in the TOC, so you may have a few more dead links occuring in the NA and SA TOC regional bird lists. Just an FYI....Anyone with other ideas?....Pvmoutside (talk) 20:53, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Add me to the list of people that hate the long TOC which results from the removal of the list-specific multi-lined TOC previously developed for country lists. It's the absolute pits for large lists like those found in most Central/South American and African lists, with the vast majority of families showing "below the fold" or even below two or three folds! Blech... Pvmoutside (talk)
What else do you have "no interest" in doing? Snowman (talk) 09:17, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Please note that when I updated level-2 headings from Storm-Petrels to Storm petrels on dozens of regional lists, I also updated the compact navigation aid, so that the page would work and so that I did not leave puzzles for other people, both readers and editors. Snowman (talk) 08:39, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Keep in mind regional lists follow local taxonomy. North America follows the ABA, which reference the group as Storm-Petrels...Pvmoutside (talk) 14:46, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Good point. I presume you meant local English names and did not mean "local taxonomy". I might need some help with ABA bird naming conventions, if these are going to be used on relevant regional lists. Are the ABA names only used in Canada and USA (ie North America)? Snowman (talk) 19:58, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
I mis-spoke a little bit. The ABA usually follows the AOU with naming rules, with the ABA's purview of only continental USA and Canada The AOU's purview is both North and South America, with the main committee issuing guidance for North America (including Bermuda, Canada, the US (inluding all the Hawaiian Island chain), Mexico, Central America to Panama, the Caribbean islands; and the South American Classification Committee issuing guidance for South America. The both AOU committees not only accept the common names used, but also on what taxonomy to accept and what not to. The actual studies and evidence are up to scientists and the publications that accept their studies. Sometimes there are conflicting studies, some of the studies/publications and the evidence they use may be deemed flawed, or the study may contradict prevailing thought so may need further assessment,which is why you see some changes and not others. Hope that explains things a bit better......Pvmoutside (talk) 16:22, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Incidentally, you should have updated the date in the key references in the regional lists you changed from 5th to 6th Clements to give the correct date that you extracted information from the source. The date for Clements is left at 2000, which is before the 6th edition of Clements was out. The date in the reference for the regional bird data is 5 May 2007, which looks out-of-date for a recently up-dated page. This might have implications for WP:V. We all make mistakes which we can learn from. In the references, please amend the date of information sourcing and write the correct date of the appropriate edition of Clements. Snowman (talk) 09:24, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
So it looks like many of the lists haven't been updated in a while. Since I already knew about some of the tax changes from the US, I thought I would at least update those (i.e. New World warblers, gulls, terns, the move of the Tanagers....) as something is better than nothing. I wasn't sure if I was getting ALL of the changes, so I left the older date, thinking that an updated date may indicate the list is fully up to date from the date listed, which it may not be. Would it be better then to leave the older information and change all back to the older taxonomy?......Pvmoutside (talk) 14:46, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
I think that your changes were partly name changes and partly an updated list of local birds; however, your edit summary could have explained the edit better, so I might be wrong. These two sources should be considered separately. Snowman (talk) 20:29, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
  • 2) I've been removing the species numbers from the family lists (i.e. "There are 20 species worldwide and 2 species which occur in....". As taxonomy is updated, and as we all know species, genera, families and even higher taxa get moved, changed, added, deleted, etc. Many of these are hopelessly out of date. By removing them, it makes the lists easier to maintain.
  • The US and UK Virgin Islands are both part of the Virgin Islands archipelago only separated by a narrow straight; see File:Virgin Islands-map-CIA.jpg. There are a huge amount of "rare/accidental" birds on both lists, so I expect these sort of sightings would occur rather randomly on both sides of the islands and separation of these sort of sightings into two pages is relativity meaningless. Avibase has a regional list for the Virgin Islands (both sides); see avibase, so I think it would be have been reasonable to keep this list on the Wiki, but I note that the combined list on the Wiki has been changed to a dab. In-the-round, I do not know if it is better to have one page, two pages, or three (combined island and the two parts) for the Virgin Islands. However, if you are not sure, it might have been better do discuss such a big change first. I would suggest re-creating the regional list for the combined islands. Snowman (talk) 09:13, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
The List of birds of the Virgin Islands page is restored with some clarifying statements in the body....Pvmoutside (talk) 14:52, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
A dab at List of birds of the Virgin Islands (disambiguation) probably would not get deleted. Snowman (talk) 19:58, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
I'll suggest again what I suggested years ago: that the family headers be put into templates (a la the template for Podicipedidae, see the List of birds of Madagascar for a number of examples) which means you'd only have to update a template in order to update every list simultaneously. Templates would also allow us to easily provide references for the information in the family headers — the lack of which is something that is regularly "slammed" when our lists are presented to the Featured List process. I started building these templates, but ran out of steam when no one else seemed to think it was a good idea. Heck, we might even think about setting up a template for each species. That would allow us to update such things as common names, scientific names and IUCN status in one place and have them update correctly on all the lists the species fell onto, without someone having to do each list manually, like we do now! MeegsC | Talk 15:26, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
By the way, templates are very powerful things. You can pass parameters to them (as I have in the example mentioned above) allowing you to indicate AE/BE spelling preferences, country-specific numbers or names, etc. So just because something is in a template doesn't mean we can't adapt things, as necessary, for specific lists. MeegsC | Talk 15:33, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
MeegsC: Used in the right way, Sounds like a great and easy way to keep the regional lists up to date once they are up and running. Great time saver as well. Beats typing in Setophaga 50 million times. I know there is work being done now on automatic taxoboxes which look like they are beginning to take shape. Maybe down the road something like that can be revised to work with regional lists?.....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:13, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
It makes sense. FWIW, List of birds of Thailand has RS referenced family headers for the 90+ families that occur in the country, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:54, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
I guess that with complex templates is will be "crap in" => "crap out". Snowman (talk) 10:03, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what you're saying, Snowman; perhaps you could explain yourself better? By passing parameters, I meant only that you can specify whether to use BE or AE (the template itself changes the spelling of the resulting output based on your selection; if you don't make a legitimate choice -- for example, by specifying CE or some such -- then the template currently "chooses" to output in BE) and that you can specify which country you're doing a list for so that it "prints" the right name into country-specific places. If that's crap to you, then yes, it's "crap in, crap out". If you mean that if some vandal passes the wrong thing in, or changes numbers or whatever, that the result will be wrong, well yes it will be — just as it would be if they typed the misinformation in directly into the article. What's your point? MeegsC | Talk 23:48, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
@Snowman, I'm not clear either. If you mean we have to get the template right, that's obviously true, but it's easier to do that than get different family intros in dozens of lists to be correct and referenced. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:53, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
It was a comment about the general and not the specific. You seem to be talking about "good quality data in" => "good quality data out". Snowman (talk) 08:24, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Average mortality for adult birds

Hello, I read on Common House Martin : « Average mortality for the adult is 40–70% ». I think 100% adults die one day, there is not a senior class... So 40-70% for... a year ? Something else ? Totodu74 (talk) 17:55, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Could that be per year? They're pretty small birds, so I could imagine it being a tough, dangerous life for them. I agree that the article could be clearer on this subject though. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 18:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I thought that it could be mortality of birds while reaching adulthood. Snowman (talk) 22:53, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I remember reading that the Herring Gull has an average annual adult mortality of around 5% - and this is a large bird that doesn't have many predators and is capable of defending itself against those it does have. 40 - 70% for a tiny prey species doesn't sound too unreasonable to me. They have short lives, but breed prolifically perhaps? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:59, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
It is annual rate, this message inspired me to find a better and more detailed ref Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:58, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your help! Totodu74 (talk) 09:42, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Category for discussion

There is a discussion for the category: Bird terminology], that could do with your input. Brad7777 (talk) 10:51, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Capitalisation

Administrator assistance requested to move: Snowman (talk) 13:49, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

These are recent changes to the wrong capitalisation. Snowman (talk) 13:44, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I've moved both and adjusted the text to fit. I've only fixed the capitalisation on AWD, no views on whether it should be Maned. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:39, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
In case you have not noticed, your edits and page moves have been reverted on both pages. Snowman (talk) 14:49, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

See also:

Snowman (talk) 14:49, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

You guys are breaching WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and no Admin should not be doing any moving as they are involved. Bidgee (talk) 15:00, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I understand that bird names used here have a very broad consensus at all levels of the Wiki and elsewhere. I understand that WP Bird names are consistent with all the major guidelines and policies on the Wiki. Bird names are complicated, because bird species may be called different names in different regions and a local bird name may not be the form used widely elsewhere. Snowman (talk) 15:07, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I wouldn't say they have broad consensus. But to suggest that admins shouldn't be doing moving, only non-admins, is kind of odd. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 15:17, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Bidgee: This is taken from the Wikipedia Local Consensus page:
  • "Consensus is not unchangeable, and matters that have been discussed in the past can be raised again, especially if there are new arguments or circumstances that were not properly considered before. On the other hand, if a subject has been discussed recently, it can be disruptive to bring it up again. As a practical matter, "according to consensus" or "violates consensus" are weak reasons for rejecting a proposal; instead, the reasons for objecting should be explained, followed with discussion on the merits of the proposal."
  • "In article title discussions, no consensus has two defaults: If an article title has been stable for a long time, then the long-standing article title is kept. If it has never been stable, or has been unstable for a long time, then it is moved to the title used by the first major contributor after the article ceased to be a stub."

I would argue as Snowmanradion explains above, Wikiproject Birds has 2 longstanding rules that has made it easier for the project to keep things stable (for the most part)....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:23, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I note that User Bidgee and User Jimfbleak have both been blocked for three hours, because of the three-reverts maximum rule. Snowman (talk) 15:29, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with non-admins or admins moving pages sensibly. Snowman (talk) 15:29, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Clearly, bird names have to be recognisable to as many people as possible. The Wiki has redirects for local names or variant spellings and often explanations of various names are provided in the introductions of bird articles. I hope that a particular bird name variant that an individual might know is catered for on the Wiki in one way or another, even if another variant of the name is used as the page title. Snowman (talk) 15:07, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

erroneous range map

It appears that the range map in the Red-bellied Woodpecker account is actually that of the Red-headed Woodpecker. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.172.22 (talk) 23:15, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that appears to be the wrong map! Looks like the editor who created it used the wrong data himself. I'll remove it from the article. MeegsC | Talk 00:14, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Use of grey, gray, colour, and color

I am starting to make lists after scanning all the bird species pages on the Wiki. Here is the first after one bug in the script was fixed to scan the Birds category (earlier lists may be incomplete). I think this is a list of all the bird names with grey/gray or colour/color (uppercase and lower case c and g included) where the Wiki page name and the IOC name are different. This is an easy one to start with. If this is likely to be a full list, then I would plan show some more lists including IOC and Wiki name comparisons. The list where the Wiki and IOC have the same name is longer; listed on this supbage. Are there any missing? Are any UK to US or US to UK page moves needed? Snowman (talk) 08:40, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Snowman (talk) 08:42, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Those with mainly African/European/Asian/Australasian ranges should be the BE grey/coloured versions, eg Cream-coloured Courser, Many-coloured Fruit Dove, Bicoloured Mouse-warbler. Those that occur mainly in the mostly BE-speaking Caribbean but not the US should also be BE eg Blue-Grey Tanager, Grey Kingbird. Those with a largely NAm distribution like Gray Jay should be AE. Those that don't normally occur in any English-speaking country eg Grey Thrasher, might as well stick with IOC Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:35, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I see what yo mean. I think that any page moves would need a clear consensus in favour. Snowman (talk) 15:54, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
6 (African Grey Parrot) is a non-IOC name that there's a consensus for. 13, 22, 24, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 46, 49, 52, and 54 have substantive differences, so we should change them to the IOC name unless someone has a good reason not to. 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, 34, 50, 51 match the IOC name except for details such as capitalization and handling of compound words. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:25, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
By the way, I'd be happy with any of the following:
@Snowman @Jerry Not always necessary to have a consensus. Four-colored Bushshrike really cannot stay there, must be either ioc (Gorgeous) or Four-coloured, since all six English-speaking countries in its (African) range use BE Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:03, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
A move to Gorgeous Bushshrike seems reasonable providing there are no taxonomy controversies. Snowman (talk) 23:04, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
I didn't say we needed a consensus—though I think we do need one to override the IOC, except on spelling variants. The Bushshrike you mention is that the species limits are controversial: are Gorgeous and Four-colo(u)red separate species (T. viridis and quadricolor), as at the IOC, or conspecific (viridis)? At present we're treating them as conspecific with a separate subspecies article for quadricolor. I have no objection to moving that article to "Four-coloured Bushshrike" on the basis of national ties.
I have no problem with returning to Four-coloured Bushshrike. I switched to the IOC spelling except for Europe and Australia/New Zealand but can live with the new parameters. I you switch to Gorgeous for the Four-colored, which I also have no issue with, then you'll have to deal with merging the current Gorgeous Bushshrike subspecies article. I stayed conservative and did not split or change genus given current evidence...Pvmoutside (talk) 00:48, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
The IOC says, "We encourage each author and publisher to select whatever spelling of these words is deemed appropriate," so I withdraw my third suggestion above.
By the way, Snowman, two more variant words, according to the IOC site: m(o)ustache and racket/racquet. And did you check somber/sombre? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 23:36, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
I did not know why you had written "somber/sombre" at the start of your comment. I will search for this and the other spelling variants that I have not searched for yet. I might be busy in real life for a few days. Are "St", "St.", or "Saint" included as spelling variants? Snowman (talk) 09:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Language localisation variants should not be a problem for automated scripts providing a complete list of all the words that have spelling variants in bird names is available. I note that the IOC page (linked above) includes an unhelpful "and perhaps others". Snowman (talk) 09:50, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I think that Sombre Rock Chat is only bird with sombre/somber. My provisional impression is that there are over 34 with m(o)ustache or racket/racquet on IOC and all these Wiki names are consistent with IOC names except there is one on IOC that I have not found on the Wiki, which could be due to a number of reasons including automatic taxoboxes that I have not scanned. Also, it might be a taxonomy difference. I would be interested to hear if anyone has different counts, so that I can check my script. I am beginning to understand how to scan the Wiki pages on birds and plan to do a log of automatic taxoboxes soon and find out how to deal with them with a script. Did you know that there are over 19,500 pages in the Birds category (recursive)? It is getting to a stage when I need to draw a diagram of the script with a pencil and paper. Snowman (talk) 18:45, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
There are also a Sombre Tit and a Sombre Greenbul. Our names agree with the IOC, so I'm just mentioning them for completeness. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:00, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Whoops, I think I searched the wrong log. Sombre Rock Chat is in a different log to the others, because its binomial name is different on the Wiki and IOC: Snowman (talk) 12:41, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
  • 1 Wiki=Cercomela dubia # IOC=Oenanthe dubia ## Wiki=IOC=Sombre Rock Chat

The others with normal taxoboxes and sombre/somber in English bird name are: Snowman (talk) 12:11, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Are there any others? Snowman (talk) 12:11, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

These should all be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, if they're dealt with at all. I think this is not an issue, so I'd vote for "Leave them the way they are, according to MOS:RETAIN". But if you wanna get into the nitty-gritty, I think a bird that's endemic to a region covered by a regional authority should use that authority's name. (e.g., Blue-gray Tanager, Gray Kingbird, Gray Catbird) Natureguy1980 (talk) 00:52, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
So does that mean you'd advocate for Australian bird names to be used in place of IOC names (for Australian endemics, that is)? MeegsC | Talk 22:43, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Absolutely (if they don't conflict with other names)! Natureguy1980 (talk) 17:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Formicariidae split

Looks like both the North American and South American committees of the AOU have split the Grallariidae (True Antipittas) away from the Formicariidae. Since there are all only North and/or South American species in both families,mind if I create the Grallaridae article?.....Pvmoutside (talk) 18:43, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I've transcribed some of the Formicariidae article into a newly created an Antpitta article which many now recognize as a new family Grallariidae. I'll leave the Formicariidae article alone (as well as moving articles) until the new family can be more thoroughly vetted from everyone....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:47, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
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