Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds

WikiProject Birds

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Category:Birds of (African countries)

Isee back in 2016 someone deleted Categories: Birds of...(African countries)but just for the African countries, nowhere else. Long term project is to try to restore them in some fashion....Pvmoutside (talk) 11:06, 17 July 2023

Tanagra violacea -> Violaceous euphonia?

I came across a mention of Tanagra violacea in one of Gerald Durrell's books. There's no current article, and as far as I can tell it's because of the reclassification of some tanagers as euphonias. I was going to create a redirect to Violaceous euphonia, which is what I think the correct name is, but I can't find a source that supports that. I figured this would be the right place to ask -- would that be a valid redirect? (talk - contribs - library) 09:42, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

User:Mike Christie, it's listed as an (unreferenced) synonym in the species box, so I have no doubt that a redirect is appropriate Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:45, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks -- I went ahead and created it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:16, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Avibase has Tanagra violacea rodwayi as a protonym of Euphonia violacea rodwayi (also as junior synonym in synonym list). It's not listed for Euphonia violacea for some reason, but it does support Violaceous euphonia as the best target for the redirect.  —  Jts1882 | talk  11:21, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Heads-up - AI websites warning

Just seen this posted on twitter by Alex Lees (Chair, BOURC); a warning about a couple of AI websites full of grotesque misinformation. Looks like the websites "aviandiscovery dot com" and "animalinformation dot com" should be added to any blacklist we have of unreliable sources. FYI, Chestnut-winged Hookbill is a South American Furnariid, and not a southeast Asian parrot, as claimed by these websites! I guess none of the regular contributors would be fooled, but we'll need to watch out for edits by less experienced editors. Unfortunately this sort of thing is only going to get worse with time - MPF (talk) 17:33, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

2024 taxonomy update

I got some mail regarding updates to the eBird/Clements checklist. Information here. For those folks who are not subscribed to Birds of the World the site is going to be open-access for a brief window from 14 to 18 November starting at noon Eastern Time. Information on that (along with a webinar) here. Should be useful for those editors who don't currently have access to the site. Reconrabbit 17:09, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

It's gone completely worthless since Cornell took over Lynx HBW. Try entering Grey Heron or Black-necked Grebe in the search box . . . those species don't exist any more, it seems - MPF (talk) 21:36, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

The entries are "Gray Heron" (the American spelling) and "Eared Grebe" (alternative common name), respectively. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:44, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

In other words, complete cultural erasure of the original English in favour of enforcing American imperialism in names and spelling: totally unacceptable! If it were wikipedia, they would fall spectacularly foul of both mos:ties and mos:retain . . . and no, I am not ever going to mis-spell Grey, etc., just to suit their imperialist agenda - MPF (talk) 21:52, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

New citation template: Cite NatureServe

A template for citing NatureServe Explorer has been created. Template:Cite NatureServe. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 23:52, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Merge?

We have a page Butorides for the genus of 3 species Green Heron, Striated Heron, Lava Heron, per IOC taxonomy. These three species are lumped by some authorities under the name Green-backed Heron, treating Butorides as monospecific; we have a page Green-backed heron for that, too. This of course covers exactly the same taxa as the Butorides page. Should the two be merged? My preference is for yes, at the Butorides page, and make 'Green-backed heron' a redirect to that. - MPF (talk) 10:57, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Do we have two articles covering the same material or an article and a disambiguation page? The separate disambiguation page would not be needed if the genus article was rewritten to explain the history prominently, but I don't think a redirect is suitable as the genus page now stands.  —  Jts1882 | talk  12:46, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@Jts1882 - there's a lot of duplication, but also some bits that would need to be transferred across in a merge. It shouldn't be too difficult, though. - MPF (talk) 23:17, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

I think merge Green-backed heron into Butorides. I see no reason not to. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 23:37, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@Jts1882, Jens Lallensack, and anyone else - shall I just go ahead, or does it need to be announced on the two talk pages? I'm a bit out-of-touch with current policies on this sort of thing after a long wikibreak - MPF (talk) 20:12, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Only thing is, shouldn't Green-backed Heron be the article name if that's the common name for the species, and Butorides redirect there (opposite of what Jens said)? FunkMonk (talk) 20:32, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think so. For unambiguity we should use the scientific name. Green-backed Heron can be used for different concepts. Butorides is unambiguous. But I support the merge with appropriate changes.  —  Jts1882 | talk  20:45, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I think that "Green-backed Heron" was the common name of a species. We should be careful to simply apply this name to the genus now, unless it is widely used as the common name, but I don't think it is. So Butorides should be fine. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:37, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@FunkMonk, Jens Lallensack, Jts1882 - I've been bold and merged the two, in the absence of any contrary comment. A query for the species table, please: is it possible to add captions to the photos? I added them at "image-alt=", but the captions I added are not showing. Thanks! - MPF (talk) 01:17, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

The |image-alt= parameter sets the alterative text shown when an image is not displayed. It also appears on mouseover. For the caption you should use |image-caption=. The caption is displayed in bold, so I wrapped it in a formatted span element:

|image-caption=<span style="font-weight:normal;"> caption for the image here </span>

It would probably be better if the formatting was applied to the caption by the template.  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:03, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

@Jts1882 - thanks! I'd actually tried the image_caption= (like in taxoboxes) but that hadn't worked either, looks like it needs all that extra coding you added which I didn't know about 😳 MPF (talk) 12:28, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

The extra code is to get rid of the bold text. The parameter in the template uses a hyphen rather than the underscore used in taxobox parameters.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:19, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for American robin

American robin has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 11:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

White-tailed Tityra

On Tityra, should White-tailed Tityra (Tityra leucura) be listed as a full species? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:31, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is now accepted by IOC 14.2 as a valid species - MPF (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: I've added it to the genus page, but not created the new page for the species - MPF (talk) 23:46, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I've written a page, but there isn't much known about it Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:28, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

It makes no sense that non-neornithines get to be in Category:Prehistoric birds when they aren't included in Aves

You can't seriously argue that our bird categories are for the same taxon as the one described on the Bird article then. This should be resolved. Either bird categories should be for modern birds only, or they should have their subject stated as Avialae rather than Bird. Or regular bird categories can be for modern birds only, but prehistoric bird categories for avialans. In that case, the prehistoric bird categories must not be categorised under the regular ones, and prehistoric neornithines should have their own stub template and categories to accommodate them as the overlap between "birds" and "prehistoric birds", and if they don't, they will need to be be put in both. So for example, Bush moa will need both Template:Paleo-bird-stub and Template:Bird-stub, even though it may seem redundant.

I think honestly, Wikipedia should move Bird to something like Modern bird or Aves and move Avialae to Bird. This is because "bird" in English includes other avialans. Only a handful of pedants argue that non-neornithine avialans are not birds as they aren't neornithines. Grey Clownfish (talk) 05:47, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

@Grey Clownfish: I think that's a pagename change too far for a major, high-traffic page like bird - MPF (talk) 16:58, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

So you're saying we shouldn't fix the discrepancy between how we define "bird" and how the majority of English speakers do because the Bird article is viewed a lot? If anything, that makes it even more important to fix. Besides, there's an discrepancy between the way we define "bird" in different pages (in various namespaces). That is why non-neornithines are included in categories for prehistoric birds.

Anyway, I've removed prehistoric bird categories from regular bird categories. This is on the grounds that the two types of "bird" categories use different definitions of "bird". Specifically, for the purposes of prehistoric bird categories, a "bird" is a member of Avialae, and for the purposes of regular bird categories, a "bird" is a member of Neornithes. There are some grey areas though, for example, should Category:Extinct birds use the avialan or neornithine definition? I decided that it should be the neornithine one, so I removed Category:Prehistoric birds from it. After all, only birds that became extinct in or after 1500 are to be included directly in it, and of course there were no non-neornithine avialans in or after 1500. Grey Clownfish (talk) 01:12, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Category:Endangered species by reason they are threatened has been nominated for discussion

Category:Endangered species by reason they are threatened has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether it complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you.

About 70 subcategories, the oldest from 2015, are also being proposed for deletion. There are a fair number of birds categorized by the threats to them, though coverage is quite incomplete. HLHJ (talk) 04:59, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

"True thrush"

As a follow-on from the recent discussion (4 up this page) about American Robin, I took a look at and expanded true thrush, the page covering the genus Turdus. I'd like to suggest it be renamed to the scientific name Turdus, as:

1. "True thrush" is a rather awful neologism that isn't in use for any species; there's nothing called "Mistle True Thrush" or (even worse) "Mistle True-thrush".
2. Neither is there by implied converse anything called e.g. "Siberian False Thrush" [Geokichla sibirica] or "Hermit Fake Thrush" [Catharus guttatus], etc. Is Wood Thrush [Hylocichla mustelina] a fraud? No!
3. The name "thrush" is universally treated as referring to the family Turdidae. Apart from that Turdus is the type genus, there's nothing that makes this genus 'truer' thrushes than any other genus in the family.
4. "True thrush" as a term is also not in any widespread use. iNaturalist uses the term 'Typical Thrush', which is better but still not ideal as it implies 'Atypical Thrush' for other genera. About the only use of it I can find is in Handbook of the Birds of the World, but they use it for the subfamily Turdinae, not the genus Turdus.
5. Scientific texts generally use "Turdus thrushes" to specify the genus explicitly (e.g. Clement, Peter; Hathway, Ren (2000-11-30). Thrushes. London: A&C Black. ISBN 0-7136-3940-7., HBW).
6. Finally, a lot of Turdus species are not (and never have been) called "thrush". As well as American Robin, of the six species common in Britain, only two (Mistle Thrush, Song Thrush) are actually called "thrush", the others being Blackbird, Ring Ouzel, Redwing, and Fieldfare; there are several other similar cases elsewhere.

Thoughts, please! - MPF (talk) 17:49, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Support. Agree, there is no such think as a true thrush. If it's a collective name for the genus it should be plural, the way BOW uses it for the subfamily. It's not a common name in use for the genus in the sense of WP:COMMONNAME, just a made-up vernacular name applied to the genus.  —  Jts1882 | talk  18:00, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Support - for all the reasons listed above. Turdus is a much better name for the article. Aa77zz (talk) 21:58, 17 November 2024 (UTC)