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Bird article name (capitalisation)

The justification given to support capitalisation of bird species names is that capitals would be useful to avoid possible confusion is some cases (e.g. Common Starling). One can understand these concerns, but capitals are not needed to avoid potential misunderstandings: anybody can use direct links to Wikipedia articles to make everything clear (e.g. common starling avoid any potential uncertainty). Mama meta modal (talk) 21:40, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Using too many Wiki-links would be inappropriate and could disrupt the readers concentration having to do a lot of clicks to look at other pages. A printed hard copy will not have active Wiki-links. Snowman (talk) 19:01, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

@Mama meta modal: we only link at the first instance in an article anyway. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:06, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

The move request is a joint move request for four pages, but one of the pages is not like the other three. "Crowed Crane" (to "Crowned crane") is for a name of a group of birds and so the move to the lower case (un-capitalized) form is uncontroversial. The other three are names for bird species. I think that this combination of four pages should not have been bunched together. Snowman (talk) 10:24, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for comments

There is now also an ongoing request for comments on the same subject: Talk:Crowned Crane#Request for comments.

Do not hesitate to come and comment on this question. Mama meta modal (talk) 08:52, 16 March 2014 (UTC).

Discussion on Crowned Crane talk page now advanced to covering about all bird pages

Now the discussion has become a Request for Comment on capitalization of all bird names (unless I am reading it incorrectly). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:17, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Listing on the dab page

Some recent edits to the Crowned Crane dab do not seem to me to be helpful, so I attempted to enhance the dab, but my edits were largely reverted, before I had finished. As far as I am aware the Red-crowned Crane is not called a "crowned crane", so I had put it in a new "See also" section with simple explanation to reduce confusion. I think that the dab could be re-classed as a "Set Index Article", which permits simple explanations. Alternatively, there may be a case for turning the dab to a redirect to Balearica, but that would need a RS for the specific use of "crowned crane" to refer to the genus. Any comments? Snowman (talk) 11:20, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Do you know absolutely-positively, everywhere, that it is not? See IOC's position on standard group names at paragraph #10 at here. The idea of a disambig page is to help people find what they need. If we're going to declare that word A means B but not C, we have to provide RSs that say that. Point of process, since I'm the reverting editor, you should have been talking to me at my talk page or at the article talk page instead of by stealth reference somewhere else.NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:38, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

• I wrote this here partly because the person who reverted my enhancements provided the edit summary; "Getting rather silly are we not?", which did not inspire me to communicate directly with that person; see reverting edit. Snowman (talk) 19:50, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

There's always WP:DR when you feel slighted, and if your alternative efforts when that happens might be perceived as stealth forumshopping it would probably be good to to at least use Template:User. At any rate, I feel the same way when I see edits based on "as far as I know". I suggest we call a truce and move on, with WP:FOC. If you've got RSs that negate the statement "crowned crane might refer to the Red-crowned Crane" by all means, restore your work. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:19, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

The Wiki article on the Red-crowed Crane does not say anything about calling or classifying this species as a crowed crane. Perhaps, the person who wrote "Getting rather silly are we not?" will be able to provide RS to show that he is correct and that I was getting rather silly. Alternatively, perhaps he would say that he has no evidence to support his revert. Of course, the Grey Crowned Crane and the Black Crowned Crane both have a mass of gold-coloured plumes on their heads that could look like a crown (a superior sort of hat) to some. The Red-crowned Crane just has a blob of red on the top of its head, probably over its crown (anatomical expression for a part of the head), but it does not have a mass of plumes on its head. Snowman (talk) 21:00, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

What I meant was that it's a simple disambig page, and its only purpose is to help readers get where they're going. As such, a simple list best meets that purpose, at least in my opinion. Struck me as "silly" to add layers of complexity and parsing to a simple disambig page. Your mileage may vary. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:06, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

@NewsAndEventsGuy FWIW, accusations of stealth editing aren't exactly AGF either Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:16, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree! As it says at AGF, you AGF unless there is reason to doubt. Is Template:User hard to use or something? At any rate, I'm going to stop posting here, and invite further discussion at my user talk page. Per the talk page guidelines, we really should be using this space for trying to improve Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds instead of duking it out over ed behavior, and mea culpa for starting us down the ed behavior path. Anyone feels the need, I agree to participate in the WP:DR process of their choice, but please bring it up at my user talk page. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 08:29, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Asking "What is the true start of this disagreement, setting aside subsequent ruffled feathers?" made me start thinking about how I read DABs, and I started wondering how ya'll view them? Most DABs, of course, start with "The word X might refer to.... A, B C." To me, such DABs do not define any etymological significance to the phrase being disambiguated. The language merely helps people quickly find the material they are looking for. However I can see that others might reasonably read DABs with a more authoritative voice, e.g., "Well gee, Wikipedia said it's OK to call Red-crowned Cranes just 'crowned crane'". Or from the editor's point of view, "We shouldn't encourage people to call Red-crowned Cranes just 'crowned crane'." And so the standard boilerplate

"The word X might refer to.... A, B C."

is ambiguous. Would it improve that specific DAB, and DABs in general, if the boilerplate were instead something more like

"If you searched for the word 'X', you might be looking for information on..... A, B, or C"?

To me that sort of boilerplate would reduce confusion/ambiguity as to the etymological significance of our disambiguation page, and would make it easier to compile them without disputes of the sort that arose in this instance. Of course, this is really a question for a broader venue, and I may pursue the matter at such a venue. For my part, the origins of this specific hiccup lie in this sort of etymological ambiguity, so do any of you who are also familiar with this instance have insights/improvements/condemnation of the idea? Let 'em rip! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 09:44, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

My intention is to discuss the dab here with people who edit bird pages as a hobby or anyone who can advance the discussion. I did not expect any replies that mentioned stealth editing. I think that discussing RS for edits on bird pages is within the scope of this talk page. As far as I am aware, part names are not included in the main list of DABs, but I think that it is reasonable to put "Red-crowned Crane" in a "See also" section. I have not referred to this discussion as a dispute. The Template:Set index article (SIA) style for disambiguation pages is relevant, which permits more detail to reduce confusion. I was intending using the SIA format, so discussing the DAB format may be unnecessary. I will finish my planned work on the list, so that people can discuss the finished product (not work that was stopped by a reverting edit). I have tried my best to advance the discussion and be informative. Any comments? Snowman (talk) 10:27, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Replied to part at talk page for Snowmanradio (talk · contribs) NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:36, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

(Later) The SIA idea is new to me. Thanks for bringing it upNewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:42, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not a bird project person, but I'd encourage you to go back to tagging it as a SIA. That format allows you to use references, and more extended descriptions than what the WP:MOSDAB allows. After repeatedly seeing editors removing useful content (that actually helped people figure out which ambiguous term they were looking for), on the grounds that it wasn't MOSDAB compliant, we've made most of the "DABs" on plant common names into SIAs. The downside is that SIAs don't have some of the bot-driven features of DABs (i.e. editors aren't notified when they link to the SIA, nor is it possible to flag SIAs with lots of incoming links), but I really think going with the SIA format for ambiguous common names of organisms leads to "disambiguations" that are more useful to the reader. See greasewood for an example of a plant where the looser format of SIAs is really taken advantage of. Plantdrew (talk) 23:04, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Very useful comment that, thanks. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 23:40, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

• There is more discussion on the lists talk page at Talk:Crowned_Crane#Contents_of_the_"Crowned_Crane"_dab, where I have raised the helpful guidelines: "A disambiguation page is not a search index . Do not add a link that merely contains part of the page title, ..."; see WP:NAMELIST. This guideline affects the listing of Red-crowned Crane. As far as I am aware, the Red-crowned Crane is not a crowned crane, but happens to have "-crowned crane" as part of its common name. Snowman (talk) 10:24, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

The dab is getting IP edits reverting it to a format that includes the Red-crowed Crane in a simple list. The Red-crowed Crane is not in the Balearica genus and it not called a crowed crane. There are also guidelines about part names in dabs, which affect "Red-crowned crane". Three IP addressees have edited the dab and are all based in Switzerland. One IP reverted three times within 24 hours. Is it worth protecting the dab page for a while. Snowman (talk) 10:18, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Consensus

The discussion was closed (and the pages moved) on 26 March 2014, see Talk:Crowned crane#Requested move for details.

Mama meta modal (talk) 20:49, 26 March 2014 (UTC).

I don't believe there was a consensus to move all the pages. There was a small consensus that on the dab page "crowned crane" did not refer to a specific species, so the capitalization rule of WP:BIRDS did not apply. But the move has also been applied to Black crowned crane, etc. which are species. Is this now to be taken as a precedent to move all bird articles to sentence case? If so, a larger RfC is needed. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:21, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Given past experience at the aircraft project and the "hyphen hysteria" (oh, pardon me, em- and en-dashes), this is likely to be continually hammered and hammered and hammered at until the project gives up in disgust... - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:39, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

The problem for Wikipedia is that what typically happens is not that the WikiProject reluctantly accepts its views being over-ruled but that at least some individual members of the WikiProject give up editing in disgust. The number of WP editors continues to decline; there's a constant call for editors with more expertise; yet when such editors appear and apply their expertise, all and sundry jump up and down criticizing and attacking them. Peter coxhead (talk) 00:20, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

This was a highly questionable close - so I have opened up a Move Review at Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2014 March Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:26, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Agree. I think it was a nice trick to mix multiple discussions and confuse anyone about what was being debated. Shyamal (talk) 00:52, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Peter coxhead, did you mean you think that the admin's closing was incorrect/questionable, or that the admin's closing only pertained to one of the four articles (i.e., "Crowned crane")? The admin who closed the discussion renamed all four articles titles using lower case. Regarding capitalization within the articles:

• In "Crowned crane", the closing admin also changed the three IOC-listed species names to lower case within the article ("black crowned crane", "grey growned crane", and "red-crowned crane"), but left the non-IOC-listed synonym "Japanese Crane" as upper case.
• "Black crowned crane" is having a minor edit war, and currently uses upper case in the article text, but uses lower case in the taxobox.
• "Grey crowned crane" currently uses lower case in the article text, including for common names of its non-IOC-named subspecies and the non-IOC name "black-crowned crane", but uses upper case in the taxobox.
• "Red-crowned crane" currently uses lower case in the lede and taxobox, and changed "crane" to lower case in the synonymous non-IOC-listed common name "Japanese crane", but uses three capitalization variations arbitrarily in the rest of the article: "Red-crowned Crane", "Red-crowned crane", and "red-crowned crane". Common names of other bird species in the rest of the article use upper case, except for "white-naped crane".

I'm not picking sides, just stating facts. :-) Agyle (talk) 15:39, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Good point. I agree that when "crowned crane" applies to a genus or group of species it should not be capitalized. So the disambiguation article "Crowned crane" is correctly titled. But unless and until the current consensus supporting the use of capitalized IOC names is changed, IOC names should remain capitalized both as titles and in running text. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:09, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes. The mixing of the dab page change and the changes to an arbitary bunch of species articles was a problem from the beginning. Shyamal (talk) 18:42, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

You mention a consensus for capitalisation, could you give us the reference? It might be only a limited local decision... (WP:CONLEVEL). What is more, Wikipedia did not say that nobody should ever refer to the work of the International Ornithological Committee, it simply said that we do not follow the same capitalisation rules as them. Mama meta modal (talk) 19:54, 31 March 2014 (UTC).

WHich, you mean in real life, like this one? Or here somewhere? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:58, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I think too much importance is given by those who read the MoS to decide whether a particular capitalization rule is "correct" or not. Most substantial editors on Wikipedia, I suspect, prefer to write in a specific area rather than to decide style policies that cover the vast diversity of topics that Wikipedia covers. Who among us would know that it is "Hermitian matrix" (after Charles Hermite) but "abelian group" (after Niels Henrik Abel) other than editors who actually work on mathematics. I am not sure it helps to label a decision like that as being something to deplore as LOCALCONSENSUS. Editors contributing substantial content need to be able to find the "convention" in use and not worry beyond that. Capitalization, following the IOC list, is for most of us just a convention, one that allows project-contributors to collaborate meaningfully on the substantial aspects without wasting time. If the technical means existed for applying a new convention across the 10000+ species articles, I suspect that more here would be happy to consider options. Here is a nice little essay on conventions in writing - http://www.ttms.org/writing_quality/conventions.htm Shyamal (talk) 10:41, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

It's not about what's "correct"; it's about what's most useful to our general readership, which is not forcing what most of them see as ungrammatical style tweaks on all of them for no net gain.

1. Not even ornithologists agree that capitalization of bird common names is "correct" within their own publications, and even where some of them of course do, they don't even agree on how to do it. There is no real convention here; there's a would-be convention advanced by one organization, a kind of "UN" of ornithology about which many regional, longer-established authorities are skeptical (it's stepping on their toes), and the practice is not universally accepted even within the field to which it pertains. Advancing this as a "standard" that Wikipeia "must" use is a blatant falsehood. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS isn't about "labeling" and "deploring", it's about stopping division "we are our own sovereign entite and these articles are ours" behavior by wikiprojects and other small, self-selecting groups of editors. MOS people didn't write that. That policy was written by the community in response to multiple WP:RFARB cases along the same lines.
2. All serious, ongoing multi-author publications have style guides, at one level of formality or another. All ornithologists are used to adapting their style to whatever publisher they are submitting something to, and we all know here that not only do virtually no journals outside of ornithology permit capitalizing bird species names even in ornithology articles, but some ornithology journals don't use it either, nor do most newspapers, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other mainstream sources. Field guides are a non-issue; they all, on all topics, capitalize or use boldface or both as a form of emphasis as a reading aid. It's not an encyclopedic style, but a highly specialized one for field guides. WP is a mainstream, general-readership source, not one of the select IOC-camp ornithology journals, and not a field guide. See WP:SSF for more detail (it's an essay that explores the reasoning in more detail for why MOS does not and cannot prescribe every specialist style quirk, especially when they conflict with normal English usage).
3. There is no conspiracy against this project and you need to stop these persecution complex histrionics, and treating project members like me who disagree with some of you as "enemies" in a "style war" (not my term - it originated here). People just disagree with you. No amount of insisting (incorrectly) that you have a "convention" and a "standard" and that reliable sources completely support you is going to change that. It's not some cabal of MOS people, but people from all over the project at all levels of involvement who disagere with you. No MOS regulars had anything to do with that RM case (and probably won't with the next, or the next, or the next - they have better things to do than stalk bird article talk pages). The issue is never going to go away because the average readers (you know, those people we're actually writing an encyclopedia, not an ornithology secret club website for?) have a consistently predictable, immediate and often visceral "what on earth is this illiterate capitalization doing here?" reaction every time they enter a birds article here. It's a serious WP:NABOBS PR problem for Wikipedia, a thousand times a day here. Meanwhile precisely zero ornithologists or birdwatchers cannot recognize a bird common name that isn't capitalized; it's a habit every single one of the participants in this project (who agree with it at all, which isn't all of them) picked up as adults, and you all know it is a specialist-publication convention. And no one buys the disambiguation reason. You distinguish the species Mexican jay from jays of multiple species in Mexico by simple writing and linking, as I just did in this very sentence.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:10, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

PS: Analogizing there being a difference between "Hermitian matrix" and "abelian group", to this project asserting that birds must specially capitalized here, is a false equivalence. There is no project claiming that all scientific concepts named after a person must be capitalized and that it's a convention they can force on everyone else. There are no mainstream style guides insisting that abelian be capitalized or Hermitian lower-cased. There is no evidence that lower-casing of abelian is some quirk that is not permitted in more general science journals or in mainstream writing. Basically, nothing about this is comparable to the bird caps situation at all.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:16, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Response to your points.

1. "There is no real convention here" - Just because there is a debate does not mean we should not stick to some convention. There is probably something to debate on just about any Wikipedia article. Guidelines exist to help in making choices when multiple names and representations exist. I am not sure of the history but Polbot and early users have used a particular style on a large number of articles. Our guidelines reflect the majority usage and may have been perhaps a choice that was forced by the pioneers. Sometimes you stick to pioneers simply because change is costly and involves a lot of work but it may also be acceptable because it is not entirely "wrong". The vast majority of editors here will never know to find or look up the Wikipedia style page but will look at exemplars and work in a similar way, perhaps even copy paste and then edit. Comparing newspapers (not even a reliable source for technical subjects!), dictionaries (non-specialist dictionaries are for the most part not even considered reliable), encyclopedias (a tertiary source is at best an outline meant for starting off research) is not particularly helpful. Your suggestion that Wikipedia is for general readership and should therefore be a shallow work of scholarship is something that may need more supporting user preference data. The idea for most editors, at least in the high quality articles is to offer a range of depths for the reader. The ideal article provides a general outline in the lead and delves into serious specialist level further on. (for an example of something that perhaps a general users will never have to worry about - see Laplace transform - as far as the talk page goes, nobody has had a visceral responses to it just because they did not understand it)
2. "... the practice is not universally accepted even within the field to which it pertains. Advancing this as a "standard" ..." - You do not seem to realize that there really is no such thing as a taxonomic gold-standard. Every author actually has a right to decide whether something should be published as a new species and if it has been wrongly considered as a new species, another author has the right to sink it as a synonym. That process is not controlled by anyone. In fact most of science is not controlled. That would be counterproductive. The one organization that exists, the ICZN, only governs the rules of naming. It does not decide on circumscription, or what characteristics decide on membership to a particular species. The interpretations of species limits is what taxonomic and systematic research are about and nothing is static. That is precisely why we need a guiding standard (and exceptions can be made and are indeed made now and then) - there are many to choose from - the IOC list has some advantages over others - i) it is free and accessible; ii) regularly updated; and iii) we do have an option to argue with the IOC on any bad name usages or other issues.
3. "All serious, ongoing" publications work with a hierarchical setup where house rules are applied without discussion. WP is not such a place.
4. "have a consistently predictable, immediate and often visceral "what on earth is this illiterate capitalization doing here?" - that this is actually so is something that needs supporting data. My own suspicion is that style is probably way down in impact on the list of quality indicators. You get enough "visceral" responses to just such things as "color" v. "colour" but we (at least the majority who are in good mental health) can learn to live with this and a lot other inconsistencies.
5. "by simple writing and linking" - one of the rules on Wikipedia is that you link only on the first use and in an article titled X you never link X.
6. "Analogizing ... difference between "Hermitian matrix" and "abelian group", to this project asserting that birds must specially capitalized here, is a false equivalence" - you are interpreting this wrongly. One of the claims being made is that WP:BIRD is the sole offender of consistency because some/most of the "members" there apparently show some kind of holier-than-thou attitude by way of their expertise (reading between the lines of SMcCandlish's personal essay Wikipedia:Specialist_style_fallacy). The reality is that there are so many deviations from the standard style across the fields, maths, astronomy, breeds, cultivars, chemistry, pharmacy, biology and that these are sometimes very specific and need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Fundamentally, at least for me, this is a mass collaboration project, across fields, with a vast diversity of editors, style rules should be minimal and allow for deviations based on what reliable sources on the specific field follow. That would be the way to actually go forward if collaboration is considered important.

The feeling I get is that you are tilting at this windmill (WT:BIRD) more often simply because it has more active editors.

Coming to the topic of capitalization itself, I have checked something on the history of capitals usage. This seems to be a tradition that is fairly old and found on both sides of the Atlantic in bird publications. There are lots of inconsistencies as well. There are of course bird books that avoid some problems by using other typographical means such as SMALLCAPS. Related to the topic are lots of philosophical underpinnings on the idea of species and there are numerous debates. There are major philosophical debates on whether a species should be considered as an entity or as a group of individuals. That in turn leads to numerous debates whether we should write "the Formicidae are" or "the Formicidae is", both of which are correct and depend on whether we are talking about the family entity or the members of the family. Similarly "The [G|g]olden [E|e]agle is" or "[G|g]olden [E|e]agles are" can depend on whether we talk about the species as an entity or about individuals of the species. Assuming for the moment that we do agree to go ahead with lower case usage, converting the case of 10,000+ species may seems mechanical but numerous rewrites may be needed to resolve the species-as-entity and species-as-individuals ambiguities. Based on a few sample pages of the Handbook of the Birds of the World (the single most comprehensive reference on birds), it seems like family introductions use capitalized bird names in running text, but species descriptions often make use of Latin abbreviated binomials in running text (and I agree that is not for a generalist audience). The results of not making appropriate amends after conversion to lower case would leave us in a situation where far more people would be exposed to many more "visceral" responses and in far more pages. (For example, if someone were to write some notes on the species and distributions in the genus Cisticola, it would be difficult to understand lower case writing and it would be far better to stick to binomials) I am no expert on philosophy and linguistics, but it is quite evident that the whole topic remains and will remain contentious not just here but among specialists and in reliable/peer-reviewed literature. Shyamal (talk) 06:03, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• Atkins, Anselm (1983). "The capitalization of birds' names" (PDF). Auk. 100 (4): 1003–1004. - supports lower case, notes that ornithological usage is curiously insular and suggests that the use of adjectives such as "common," "eastern," "lesser," or "gray" in a bird's name is a mistake that could be fixed. This is in response to the capitalization convention included in [COUNCIL OF BIOLOGY EDITORS. 1978. Council of biology editors style manual: a guide for authors, editors, and publishers in the biological sciences, fourth ed. Arlington, Virginia, Council of Biology Editors]
• Potter, Eloise F. (1984). "On capitalization of vernacular names of species" (PDF). Auk. 101 (4): 895–896. - This of course has been dismissed by SMcCandlish as "non-sense".
• Jensen, Richard J. (2011). "Are species names proper names?". Cladistics. 27 (6): 646–652. doi:10.1111/j.1096-0031.2011.00357.x. - "Some argue that species names are Millian proper names: names that have no meaning. Others have countered that species names are Millian general names that have stipulative definitions. Here I argue that species names belong to neither category. In particular, unlike Millian proper names, species names have unique referents and are connotative. Further, species names are names of intension that, unlike Millian general names, refer to specific collective entities. Because species names have unique properties not associated with Millian general or proper names, but recognizing the similarity to proper names in most respects, I propose that they be categorized as extra-proper names."
• de Queiroz, Kevin (2011). "Plural versus Singular common names for Amphibian and reptile Species". Herpetological Review. 42 (3): 339–342. - "use of singular common names as the equivalents of the scientific names of species is inconsistent with modern species concepts and the meanings of the words from which the names are formed, and therefore, that plural common names should be used instead", "Under the interpretation of the common names of species as proper names (e.g., Parkes 1978; Potter 1984), those names are commonly capitalized. However, because common names are more appropriately interpreted not as the names of species as wholes but as names of the sets of organisms of which species (as population lineages) are composed (de Queiroz 1995), common names are not, strictly speaking, the names of individual species. Therefore, they are not proper nouns and need not be capitalized (compare Atkins 1983). This conclusion is consistent with the use of common names for the organisms comprising our own and other species (“humans,” “dogs,” “cats,” etc.), which generally are not capitalized. I am not arguing however, that common names should not be capitalized. There may be other reasons for capitalizing common names, such as distinguishing the common names of species from general descriptions of organisms (e.g., “Green Frogs” versus “green frogs”) and ease of recognition while reading (Nelson et al. 2002; Parkes 1978).
• McKinsey, Michael (2010). "Understanding proper names" (PDF). Linguistics and Philosophy. 33 (4): 325–354. doi:10.1007/s10988-011-9080-y.
• http://www.virology.ws/2012/08/07/is-it-ebolavirus-or-ebola-virus/ - Summary: you do need to follow specialists
• http://epress.com/w3jbio/vol8/williams/williams.doc - Summary: it does produce emotional responses
• Newton, Alfred & Hans Gadow (1896). A dictionary of birds. London: Adam and Charles Black. - One of the first specialist dictionaries in ornithology - written by Alfred Newton (Cambridge Professor who was not particularly "illiterate")- uses capitals. Newton wrote the entry on Ornithology in the 9th edition of the Encylopaedia Britannica - and you can see it here. So EB was not above using capitals either.

@Shyamal: - I think you'd better paste all these links above at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Evidence_supporting_option_2 and quickly. I'd do it myself but can't claim the attribution.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:31, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

@Casliber: Feel free to re/use content here. I am not particularly motivated to enter these tiresome discussions. Shyamal (talk) 14:03, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Another bird name discussion

Re; Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#A_new_proposal_regarding_bird_article_names. Snowman (talk) 15:19, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I despair. Narrow-minded pedants wanting to ride rough-sod over birding tradition. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds [1] Chuunen Baka (talk • contribs) 17:05, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

New discussion

The important discussion started on Talk:Crowned crane and Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2014 March#Black crowned crane now moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#A new proposal regarding bird article names.

Mama meta modal (talk) 21:05, 9 April 2014 (UTC).

Invitation to Participate in a User Study - Final Reminder

Would you be interested in participating in a user study of a new tool to support editor involvement in WikiProjects? We are a team at the University of Washington studying methods for finding collaborators within WikiProjects, and we are looking for volunteers to evaluate a new visual exploration tool for Wikipedia. Given your interest in this Wikiproject, we would welcome your participation in our study. To participate, you will be given access to our new visualization tool and will interact with us via Google Hangout so that we can solicit your thoughts about the tool. To use Google Hangout, you will need a laptop/desktop, a web camera, and a speaker for video communication during the study. We will provide you with an Amazon gift card in appreciation of your time and participation. For more information about this study, please visit our wiki page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Finding_a_Collaborator). If you would like to participate in our user study, please send me a message at Wkmaster (talk) 05:30, 10 April 2014 (UTC).

Question on Southern Boobook

I was looking into Southern Boobook, which is linked as the model article for bird naming in WP:FAUNA. While the article is titled Southern Boobook, that name isn't mentioned in the article text, and the opening sentence uses the name Morepork. The opening section has been disputed for ten years, with different editors replacing the material with various common and binomial names, without citing sources. Two references cited elsewhere in the article (IUCN and a book) list both Southern Boobook and Morepork as names for Ninox novaeseelandiae.

I summarized some taxonomy sources in Talk:Southern Boobook. Two main approaches are:

• Treat Southern Boobooks and Moreporks as a single species, Ninox novaeseelandiae. IUCN does this, and I think the IOU (IOC) formerly did.
• Treat them as two species, Morepork (N. novaeseelandiae) and Southern Boobook (N. boobook). The IOU (IOC) and ITIS (1, 2)/Catalogue of life do this.

Websites like the Encyclopedia of Life and Avibase present both views from information from other sources.

Which should be followed in this case? I was leaning toward separation, since WP:BIRDS relies on the IOU for naming, and started a Draft:Morepork stub, but would defer other opinions here.

Agyle (talk) 22:10, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't it have to be a preponderance of reliable sources, accounting for their relative reliability on the subject? IOC itself is not a taxonomic authority, however much some of us like their common names list (even I favor it, just not basing encyclopedia style decisions on it). So, IOC classification can't be used as rationale, pre WP:UNDUE. IOC's agreement with ITIS might be non-trivial, but it can't be the deciding factor, surely.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:46, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

This is tricky - I recall this being discussed on birders' lists as the Tasmanian and NZ populations of boobooks appeared to be more closely related to those in northern Australia - generally the IOC reflects consensus, but can lag at times. I will try and take a look where the research lies currently, but I suspect the situation is not settled. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:16, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Wasn't this specific page being used to illustrate an example at one or another of the guidelines and other pages? It rings a bell. I think it was being used as an exampel of an article bieng at IOC name, but having lots of common names, some in English, some not, or something like that. I'm not sure it can be used as an example of anything, because its facts are in flux, and at this point the name in its article title isn't even mentioned in the lead at all. Whatever the eventual outcome of the taxonomic debate in the real world, it needs to be moved to an article title that agrees with the text.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a very strong possibility we will be splitting the species into three - given that novaezealandiae is the NZ one, it'll likely be at Morepork - I just need to read the paper on the talk page - this is a teeny bit premature. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:16, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

User:SMcCandlish, the guideline WP:FAUNA lists it as the example of how to handle bird names. There's no doubt the article needs attention; it's being further discussed in Talk:Southern Boobook. Agyle (talk) 05:42, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Needed fossil bird articles

If anyone wants to rapidly expand their number of created articles, or are simply bored, here is a list of fossil bird genera with dozens of red links, all needing articles: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/List_of_fossil_birds FunkMonk (talk) 06:06, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Current state of African Grey Parrot/Timneh Parrot taxonomy...

See Talk:Talking_bird#Taxonomy_of_African_grey_parrot. What's the current situation with regards to the African Grey Parrot and the Timneh Parrot being considered separate species? BirdLife International split them in 2012, but it seems that the WP articles have not been updated to reflect this - they're still showing them both as subspecies. Is there any particular reason why it was decided not to go with the new taxonomy? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:50, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

My opinion is that the split should be accepted here, that most of the material in African Grey Parrot should be moved to Congo Parrot or Congo Grey Parrot, with a genus article called African grey parrot or possibly Psittacus. Maias (talk) 01:24, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

See also the previous discussion from June 2012; Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Birds/Archive_61#New_African_Grey_Parrot_split. Snowman (talk) 11:09, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

• I think everyone agrees, it's just a matter of somebody doing it.... FunkMonk (talk) 20:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Timneh Parrot has been changed now. I also created a stub at Psittacus. The African Grey Parrot article is quite daunting... :) --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:39, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I also think (and I am aware that not everyone will agree) is that there is a hell of a lot of redundant verbiage in the common names, and that it would be simplest to have 'Congo Parrot' and 'Timneh Parrot' for the species and (if not Psittacus) 'Grey parrots' for the genus. Shoehorning 'African' in as well is unnecessary when Timneh and Congo both indicate more specific range. Maias (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

No, we won't agree, per WP:COMMONNAME. "African Grey Parrot" is what everybody refers to it as, if that's redundant it should be taken up with the greater world. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:39, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

That's fine as the genus common name - i.e. 'African grey parrots' - but, for the species, adjectiveally overdone names such as (for example) 'Timneh African Grey Parrot' are grotesque. Maias (talk) 01:07, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Prior to splitting the taxa were called "Congo African Grey Parrot" and "Timneh African Grey Parrot" and I think that these names should be kept on the Wiki unchanged until other names become established. As far as I can see, the new genus is called Psittacus and it does not have any other name. Snowman (talk) 20:49, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, 'Congo African Grey' and 'Timneh African Grey' just seem to be the names that are commonly used in the real world. There are others too, such as 'Cameroon African Grey', 'Ghana African Grey' and 'Princeps African Grey' that are sometimes still used, but I think it's been established by now that these don't actually exist as separate taxa. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 21:25, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I think that the current page for the African Grey Parrot could make a good bases for a genus page, so it could be moved to Psittacus. Then new pages for "Congo African Grey Parrot" and "Timneh African Grey Parrot" would need to be enhanced. Most of the work is relabeling, because most of the details of the two taxa are already present. Snowman (talk) 09:36, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

The Timneh Parrot has been accepted by the IOC on Thursday http://www.worldbirdnames.org/updates/update-diary/ --Melly42 (talk) 10:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

OK, that makes it clearer what to call it on the Wiki. Snowman (talk) 19:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

• Now Psittacus and African Grey Parrot should be merged. FunkMonk (talk) 20:47, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, I think that the two are a forked topic. It might be best for a specialist administrator to do the merge to retain as much of the edit history as possible. Snowman (talk) 21:24, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Psittacus was just a redirect before I created the current stub. Not much history to merge, really. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:49, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Is African Grey Parrot the proper name then? Is there any evidence this would cover the genus (the distinction is of course redundant now, as the clades both only contain the same two species) as well? FunkMonk (talk) 01:09, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me, I do not understand what User Funk Monk is asking or why. My assumption is that the genus and the two species should each have a separate Wiki article. As far as I am aware, "African Grey Parrot", "Grey Parrot" (Grey or Gray can both be used) are widely used common names for one the species. Of course, if there is a RS that would verify a common name for the new genus, then that common name would be a candidate for the name of the genus article on the Wiki. The Scientific name for the genus would be used on the Wiki in the absence of a RS that says that the genus has a common name. Snowman (talk) 09:07, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Would this work: for simplicity User Kurt Shaped Box could copy most of the Psittacus page to the introduction of the African Grey Parrot page (there would not be an attribution problem, because the text on the Psittacus page is all his work), delete the Psittacus page, and then move the African Grey Parrot article (with its long edit history) to Psittacus. A new article about the species African Grey Parrot would then need creating. When the page structures are ready, then perhaps discussions would clarify what needs to go on each page. Snowman (talk) 09:17, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure which part of my comment you misunderstood, because you seem to have answered my question with your follow up. FunkMonk (talk) 13:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I note that the main pages have been moved, but "Talk:African Grey Parrot" needs to be moved the the new genus page to follow its main page. Snowman (talk) 18:39, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Update: This move has been completed. Snowman (talk) 12:15, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Anyhow, http://www.worldbirdnames.org/updates/update-diary/ says that "recognition of subspecies P.t. princeps under review". Does that mean that they're thinking of bringing the Princeps African Grey back now? As a subspecies of the TAG now? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:59, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• It sounds like someone is thinking about it. I wonder if the conclusion will be controversial or widely accepted. Snowman (talk) 18:30, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Would someone who knows how to do this and make it look good be able to create a range map for Psittacus erithacus, please? We don't have one yet (that I could find), though there is one for timneh already... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:19, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I could if you show me a source I can base it on. FunkMonk (talk) 05:37, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! :) This looks like a good one that you could use. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 07:39, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

How's this?[2] FunkMonk (talk) 12:12, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

May need indication of the ranges of the two new species. Snowman (talk) 19:51, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd need a source for that too. FunkMonk (talk) 02:45, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Forshaw has a range map in his identification guide to parrots. The smaller range including Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast is for the Timneh. The larger range and the islands are for the Congo. In this book the range for the Timneh is only approximately half of the area on the above internet image being only that part nearer to the coast. I have no idea which is the more accurate. I would write in the reference on a Commons image, if you use this information to make the map. Snowman (talk) 09:52, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The rangemap at the BirdLife link I posted is for the Congo Grey alone. Here's the page for the Timneh to compare... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 11:19, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The two ranges linked to external websites are approximately consistent with the range map in Forshaw 2006 for the two species. Snowman (talk) 13:09, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

So, if we're going to assume that the BirdLife maps are accurate and up to date, then File:Timnehdist.gif needs updating on Commons to include the Timneh population in Guinea-Bissau. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 16:34, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

So the map is ok? FunkMonk (talk) 20:50, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Looks great to me! Provided that no-one else has any objections, I'd say job done... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:45, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Alright, added. Seems we need a new Commons category for the other species, by the way, and then to recategorise a lot of images. FunkMonk (talk) 03:32, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Request for article reviewers

Questions have been raised about the accuracy of science articles written by the prolific author Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs). The background can be read in a regrettably long and bad-tempered thread at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive835#Harassment. If you do not want to read the whole thing, start here. To her credit, Cwmhiraeth has initiated Wikipedia:Editor review/Cwmhiraeth. It would help to generate light, rather than more heat, and to decide whether there is a serious problem, if scientifically-qualified editors uninvolved in the row could review some of Cwmhiraeth's articles and comment at the editor review. JohnCD (talk) 21:11, 14 April 2014 (UTC) This edit unsigned by User Cwmhiraeth at 06:28, 16 April 2014

Links to archived AN/I thread updated. JohnCD (talk) 13:39, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Merge discussion

I have suggested a merge of Shaheen Falcon into Peregrine Falcon. Comments welcome at Talk:Peregrine Falcon Shyamal (talk) 02:12, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

A somewhat more general question would be in order. When do subspecies articles justify a separate article? Just noticed that we have a Canarian Houbara which is only a subspecies of the Houbara Bustard, the only population elevated in that group to species is MacQueen's Bustard (incidentally these are currently having a wave of visitation due to a recent princely hunt that took out a good percentage of the world population). Shyamal (talk) 06:44, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

New category proposal: Category:Bird behavior

I'd like to elicit feedback on creating a new category: Category:Bird behavior, as a subcategory of Category:Birds. Bird behavior could comprise several of the articles in Outline of birds#Bird behavior as well as descendent categories Category:Bird breeding, Category:Bird feeding, Category:Bird flight, Category:Bird migration, Category:Hybridisation in birds, and could absorb many of the entries in Category:Ornithological terminology (which is an oddly vague category anyway: presumably anything bird related is an ornithological term). --Animalparty-- (talk) 19:53, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't have any objection to such a category, but really Category:Birds and its subcategory Ornithology are a bit messy and need some sorting out, with some articles shifted one from to the other. Should the Bird Behavior category be a subcat of Ornithology? Maias (talk) 03:24, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree that Category:Birds and Category:Ornithology need cleanup, and this would be a step. There seems to be a good amount of circular and redundant categorizing (WP:SUBCAT). Most of the articles in Category:ornithology could easily be transferred to Category:Birds (or one of its subcategories), leaving the few articles that explicitly deal with the discipline and not the animals (e.g. History of ornithology and Category:Ornithologists‎). Alternately, the entire category Ornithology could be merged into Category:Birds, since the study of birds encompasses everything related to Birds, but that is currently beyond the scope of my initial proposal. --Animalparty-- (talk) 04:24, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Category Birds has content that is not ornithology; for example Donald Duck and food article, so do not literally merge Category Birds and Category Ornithology without doing a lot of other sorting out as well. Snowman (talk) 07:46, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

No worries : I will leave those separate for now. I have simply transferred several subcategories of C:Birds into the more specific subcategory Category:Bird behavior. The question of whether birds is a subcategory of ornithology or vice versa is for others to debate. See, however, my CfD for Category:Ornithological terminology. --Animalparty-- (talk) 04:14, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Categories for Discussion: Ornithological terminology

Please see my proposed CfD for Category:Ornithological terminology, arguiing a list or glossary may be better than an arbitrary, vague, and overlapping category. Cheers, --Animalparty-- (talk) 04:18, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Very short stubs

Articles like "White-whiskered Spinetail" are very short, but they haven't been merged. Does a consensus exist on not merging them? If so, could you please point me towards the relevant discussion? Thanks. --Leptictidium (mt) 13:22, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I think only subspecies articles are occasionally merged, not full species. FunkMonk (talk) 13:41, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Never ever? Even if the article consists of only two lines of text?--Leptictidium (mt) 14:13, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Not when it comes to extant species at least. All valid, extant species (of any kind) should have articles.[3] It becomes a bit more iffy when it comes to prehistoric species, because there is often little to write about them (and their validity is always in flux), so they are usually redirected to the genus level. FunkMonk (talk) 14:25, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

@Leptictidium: as a challenge, pick any taxon at all you find as a one line stub and I bet we can expand it. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I know you could. Actually, I agree with all of you. It's just that on the Catalan Wikipedia there's a handful of people who'd have us merge off such species articles into the article about the genus, so I've come here to see if you can give me a few arguments to use against them. Thanks.--Leptictidium (mt) 14:54, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Right, well the best thing is to expand any article that is discussed. After you show how this can be done a few times they should figure it out. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 15:10, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

And if you are struggling for sources and are prepared to translate, ask here. The species you quote has about 60 lines on HBWonline which I would be happy to send you. There is also a IUCN page on every species with status, range and some ecology Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:29, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not advocating merging, but I do think there is great merit in expanding the Synallaxis article: rather than merely serving as a directory of species, the genus article should discuss diversity and patterns across the group, in a convenient, centralized, accessible format (see for instance Buteo). Context is key! --Animalparty-- (talk) 04:12, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Royal Society journals - subscription offer for one year

I'm delighted to say that the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy for science, is offering 24 Wikipedians free access for one year to its prestigious range of scientific journals. Please note that much of the content of these journals is already freely available online, the details varying slightly between the journals – see the Royal Society Publishing webpages. For the purposes of this offer the Royal Society's journals are divided into 3 groups: Biological sciences, Physical sciences and history of science. For full details and signing-up, please see the applications page. Initial applications will close on 25 May 2014, but later applications will go on the waiting list. Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 03:11, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Another Royal Society offer

I'm also trying to organize a release of some images in various categories from their Picture Library. One of the categories is historic (out of copyright) natural history books, mainly for the illustrations. Are there particular books or other holdings that people would like to see images from, or particular images? Unfortunately much of what they have is not digitized and much of what is digitized is not presently online at the last link. The main library catalogue search page is here. Before asking, please try to see if decent quality images are not available elsewhere, as they often are, from the Library of Congress etc (so no Audobon please!). Thanks, Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 09:58, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress on International Ornithological Committee

A discussion is taking place about whether the article currently entitled International Ornithological Committee should be renamed to International Ornithological Union.

The discussion is at Talk:International Ornithological Committee#Requested_move, where your input from members of this WikiProject will be welcome. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:12, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I would merge all articles into International Ornithological Congress. --Melly42 (talk) 10:28, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

That appears to be the majority view at the discussion page, but only three people there so far Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:52, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Speaking of lists...

As a legacy of the days of slower computers, we still have some country lists which are split, such as List of passerine birds of Korea and List of non-passerine birds of Korea. Any point merging, or not worth bothering with? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:33, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Merge would make sense. Shyamal (talk) 11:11, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I'll wait a day or two to see if anyone objects Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:51, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, done Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:43, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Images at Indian scops owl

I noticed that the images on the Indian scops owl page, in addition to being oddly placed, all have collared scops owl in their titles. I believe that the collared scops owl is a distinct species. Can someone with experience in this area verify that the photos illustrate the correct species? Pburka (talk) 03:19, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

The images correctly represent Otus bakkamoena which used to include lettia as O. b. lettia in the past and O. bakkamoena in the broad sense was also called the "collared scops owl" by some books/authors. Shyamal (talk) 07:05, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Do you have move rights on Commons? If not, let me know and I'll rename them Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:18, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I have "filemover" permission but it seems like fixing the category and description should do for the moment. Shyamal (talk) 07:23, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Adding references to articles

Hi all. I recently aquired a lot of books on birds and ornithology and as Wikipedia already has decent articles for the majority of birds covered by these books, I thought I'd contribute by going through articles and adding references where there is a lack of them. If there's an article you need references for, or there's just a specific bird or birds you want more information on please let me know, as I'd be happy to help if I can. --Adam Black ^{talk • contribs • uploads • logs} 13:12, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Umm...gee, where to start....there was a wikiproject cleanup page - will try and find that. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:24, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

@Adamblack93: = here it is! See Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Cleanup listing - if you find and fix some tags, that'd be great! Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:36, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll get started on that shortly. I need somewhere to start - there's so much information in these books and hundreds of species are covered so looking for articles with tags will be a good place to start. --Adam Black ^{talk • contribs • uploads • logs} 14:39, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Cas, that one was generated in 2009 or so, here's an up to date cleanup listing. —innotata 15:34, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

We should probably delete that then. In fact I might just now. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:53, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

CfD notification: restricted-range endemic bird species categories

Hi, all. In case you don't check out CfD very often, there's a discussion regarding several "restricted-range endemic bird species" categories at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 May 11#Category:Restricted-range endemic bird species. There haven't been any comments at the discussion yet, so I thought that some of you might have an opinion. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 21:02, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Birds At Wikimania 2014

Are you looking to recruit more contributors to your project?
We are offering to design and print physical paper leaflets to be distributed at Wikimania 2014 for all projects that apply.
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Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 13:57, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Porzana vs Zapornia

According to IOC, H&M and the upcoming HBW/Birdlife-Check-list Zapornia should preferred over Porzana. As there is still no article about Zapornia what would you thinking about to write the Zapornia article and edit the particular species' articles? --Melly42 (talk) 16:07, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I've found no evidence on Zapornia. --Coo coo pigeon (talk) 14:43, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Dickinson & Remsen: The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World, Volume 1: Non-passerines, 2013 --Melly42 (talk) 17:07, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Article split proposal

I propose that we split Columbidae Into two seperate articles, Columbidae and Columbiformes. The reason for this is that Columbiformes aren't Columbidae, But columbidae branches under Columbiformes (aka pigeons/doves), Columbiformes page does exist, but only as a redirect. Columbidae isn't Columbiformes, but its a branch under Columbiformes, Columbiformes is an order, not a family. --Coo coo pigeon (talk) 22:17, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Columbiformes is an order and Coloumbidae is a family, but Columbidae is the only family in the monotypic order Columbiformes, so their membership is identical and two articles would be redundant. Are you using some taxonomy which splits Columbiformes into more than one family? Can you give an example of a columbiforme bird which is not a columbid? Maias (talk) 02:02, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Are there any extinct families I wonder? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:38, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

See here: List of North American birds (Columbiformes) There may be more, but here's what i could find so far. --Coo coo pigeon (talk) 04:02, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, the recently extinct Raphinae were once a separate family, now subsumed into Columbidae, while the living Pteroclididae now have their own order, the Pteroclidiformes. I have no idea whether there are older fossil families. Columbidae has several subfamilies as well which someone may someday raise to family level. Maias (talk) 06:08, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I am pondering whether discussion on the (say) taxonomy would suggest that a separate order page was an option - as this could be on it. Hmmm. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:11, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

In which case this paper may be of interest. Maias (talk) 13:03, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I couldn't be bothered to read it at first, What is it about? --Coo coo pigeon (talk) 14:35, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

It's mainly about sorting out the relationships between different pigeon genera, something like constructing a family tree, by looking at their DNA. Maias (talk) 00:19, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

• Comments: From the introduction of the above paper (Pereira et al. 2007), Raphidae has historically and currently been recognized as a distinct family within Columbiformes, by at least some authors, but various phylogenetic hypotheses have muddled this distinction, including the one performed by Pereira et al., which firmly embedded "Raphidae" (consisting solely of two extinct genera), in among the Columbidae, most often sister to Caloenas, in accordance with previous studies. I think everyone agrees that Raphi(d/n)ae is a clade, and Columbidae is a clade (which may or may not include Raphidae), but the debate about whether one name should have a "d" or an "n" the suffix is largely semantic especially to the great majority of Wikipedia readers. Whichever treatment is used on Wikipedia, I think ideally reliable secondary sources should be given greater weight than independent studies (which often disagree with one another), to give a better representation of the current consensus. Thus, for instance, modern review papers or scholarly texts should be given more credence than what individual papers say about the placement of Raphididae. If or where secondary sources disagree, the nature of their disagreement will probably more accurately reflect consensus. My comments apply to any situation where subfamily/family debates occur: pick a naming scheme supported on reliable contemporary sources, give due coverage to debates, and try to see past the nomenclature: ranks are ultimately arbitrary or meaningless descriptions of clades.--Animalparty-- (talk) 04:09, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, not really as in this study dodos are well and truly nested deep within the pigeon clade, and are not separate. So if they are even a subfamily, that means a whole bunch of division of Columbidae....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:44, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

The extant relatives of the Dodo are Didunculus and Caloenas --Melly42 (talk) 10:48, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

The Dodo birds have most recently been suggested as a tribe, raphini, so they would be well within Columbidae (Parrish 2013). FunkMonk (talk) 16:23, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Bird common name decapitalisation

Just in case some of you weren't aware of it, your thoughts and votes are welcome at the discussion here: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Bird_article_names:_option_2 Natureguy1980 (talk) 22:39, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

• A user is currently moving a lot of bird articles to non-capitalised titles: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:Contributions/ErikHaugen FunkMonk (talk) 18:20, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I just moved a couple, others are moving them a lot faster than I am. There was talk about making a bot, but I don't even know how that would work. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:35, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd be very wary about a bot, given that many bird names incorporate proper nouns, and spellings in poems, musical pieces and references might need to be capitalised anyway, to reflect the quoted source. eg "The Windhover" and Franklin's For my own part. I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country Jimfbleak - talk to me? 19:01, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

It is good that people move the articles this way. The consensus is now clear. The relevant pages will soon be checked and made consistent with Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Bird common name decapitalisation.

H. H. Wander Strata (talk) 23:05, 2 May 2014 (UTC).

And thus, another part of Wikipeida falls prey to "The MOS trumps all, even actual useage in real-life". - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 08:09, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I haven't done much for Wikipedia's bird articles besides a little typofixing here and there — and, now that the RFC is closed, a little moving — so I suppose one train of thought would be that I shouldn't comment here. However, ... it does strike me that if (as you said in your edit summary) 90% of your interest in bird articles was based on how names were capitalized, you too must never have had much interest in bird articles. -sche (talk) 08:40, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

@The Bushranger: The lower case actually is majority usage in real life, just not in field guides (which capitalize for emphasis, a practice IOC picked up from them, not vice versa). See an entire day's worth of ngram research that proves lower case is more common. There's a big difference between preferring the best-attested style (WP:COMMONNAME and "follow the sources"), and preferring some style because someone declares it "more correct".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:39, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak: as I've pointed out before, quoted text in the English Wikipedia should not simply reproduce the typography of the source – read MOS:QUOTE: "Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment". So Franklin's text should be de-capitalized – according to the MOS. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:02, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: While I would accept that as a general case (which doesn't affect my point about titles), I'm not sure whether it's vigorously applied in practice. I'll lc the Franklin bit and see if there is any comeback. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:37, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

That would seem WP:POINTy. We don't change stylistic matters in quotations without a good reason to do it. Capitalization is not "formatting" in the sense meant there (font choices and the like), nor is it "purely typographical". The fact that capitalization is not purely typographical but is used to convey specific properties e.g. "proper name", "beginning of a sentence", etc., is precisely why this debate arose. 19:39, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

PS: In Franklin's passage, just decapitalizing "Bald Eagle" would be worse than pointy; he was writing in Early Modern English, which still capitalized nouns and noun phrase like German does, as is clear from the rest of the text.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:56, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

That we shouldn't change it, I agree, but that's not what the MOS very clearly says. If you don't think the MOS means what it says, then help to change it. However, defining what is "purely typographic" is not straightforward, given that the MOS requires hyphens/dashes to be changed from the source, scare quotes not to be differentiated, etc. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:43, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: I'd be on board with clarifying that stuff, certainly. I've long thought that section was too vague and permissive. But this is probably the wrong venue. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:10, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: I agree on all these points. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:22, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

• Whatever happened to the fifth pillar[4] of Wikipedia? FunkMonk (talk) 11:09, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, we don't need imposition of a firm rule like IOC naming, even where it doesn't work well, like an encyclopedia.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:39, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Erm, isn't the ruling above just that, a "firm ruling" that is not really necessary? FunkMonk (talk) 10:38, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

The conversion is challenging

I was just now adding various sourced subspecies common names to Red-tailed hawk. Check out the source I cited - That Sibley wbpage and the citation I generated for it and its book counterpart can be used to add a bunch of missing subspecies names to quite a few more N. Am. species articles; remember that the IOC is not the be-all and end-all of bird nomenclature. BTW, please also notice that, yes, I do in fact work on bird articles, despite how many times people on this page have treated me like an enemy of this wikiproject instead of a participant in it.

Anyway, I noticed that the article had already been moved from the upper-case name, so I took on the conversion in the text. It's definitely something that would be challenging to do by bot or by AWB, since one has to account for:

• Quotations
• Titles of articles and larger works in citations (and sometimes not in citations)
• URLs that include the common name
• File/image names that include the common name
• Names of external links
• Perhaps other "literal" cases we should not modify
• Retaining capital letter at the beginnings of sentences, headings, captions, list items, probably other cases

I also found that the capitalization and hyphenation were terribly haphazard, even in a very well-developed article on a major species like this. I encountered all of the following (in singular and/or plural form): Red-tailed Hawk, Red-Tailed Hawk, Red Tailed Hawk, red-tailed hawk, Red Tail Hawk, Red-tail, red-tail, Red-tailed, redtail. Also found wrongly capitalized were some cases of "Hawk" and "Owl" by themselves. Plus one case of "Buteos" (which should be "species of Buteo" or "Buteo species", or perhaps "buteos" if that is really the plural English word for "Buteo species", which I doubt). And this wasn't even a case where different organizations and sources fight over how/whether to hyphenate or compound, or how to capitalize after hyphen, much a case where there were conflicting common names. Without the capitalization, that variant list I just gave would have been only: red-tailed hawk, red tailed hawk, red-tail, red-tailed and redtail. Much more manageable. The point being, despite the high level of pro-capitalization activism, very little care was being taken to ensure that it was being done properly or consistently.

Interestingly enough, not a single place in the article required rewriting to avoid an interpretation like "hawks of various species that happen to have red tails", the bogey-man case that the pro-capitalization argument trots out as the smoking-gun reason to upper-case these names. Once it's clear that the article is about the red-tailed hawk, boldfaced in the lead sentence, it's 100% clear that every reference to "red-tailed hawk", "red-tails", even "the hawk", are about this species not about some other bird. About the only place this kind of confusion could possibly arise on WP is in a non-bird article, and only under circumstances of particularly poor judgement, e.g. in a construction like "the American badger may compete to an extent with red-tailed hawks", where anyone who thought for half a second would not only link to the hawk's article but write "the red-tailed hawk", not "red-tailed hawks". It's just proving to be a non-issue. The real issue is the large amount of work the conversion will require. But, it's been done before; tens of thousands of non-bird articles, including almost all amphibians, reptiles, mammals and many others, were capitalized like this for quite some time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:00, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

In fairness, I don't think IOC normally gives English names for subspecies anyway. Inclusion of English names for subspecies really comes down to whether there are credible sourced names (I've seen articles where they look very much made-up) and whether they are used. The practice is likely to be more widespread in the US/Canada, where several subspecies may occur in an English speaking area (as with the hawk), than in Eurasia. For example, only one of the 20+ ssp of Eurasian nuthatch occurs in the UK/Ireland, so most wouldn't be expected to have a common English name. The exception is S e. arctica. which is sometimes called Siberian nuthatch, but only because it is a potential split Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:50, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Definitely a daunting task, not suitable for a bot. I just wanted to point out, for anyone who might not be aware, that capitalization within quotations should generally be changed to conform to Wikipedia's MOS (MOS:QUOTE#Typographic conformity), and I think book and article titles should also have their case changed (generally title case for English-language book titles (MOS:CT, and title or sentence case for periodical articles titles MOS:ALLCAPS)). Agyle (talk) 21:28, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

IAR

I will further capitalize the bird names. If Wikipedians have a problem with that they should read a GOOD bird book. And another point. I am certainly dislike the redirects to lower case spellings. --Melly42 (talk) 13:03, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Your second sentence is an exemplary instance of WP:POV, WP:ADVOCACY, and WP:POINT. That's not me trying to attack you, that's simply what it is. Long-standing consensus clearly goes against this mindset and it would be much better for all involved to accept it and stop arguing about it because that clearly won't change anything. LazyBastardGuy 16:32, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, I've been suggesting to pro-caps WP:BIRDS editors for years that any who find lower-casing excessively objectionable should just cite WP:IAR and write as they will. There are things I ignore in MOS. There's a difference between reverting other people following MOS and ignoring a point in MOS that others follow. On such points one such point, these days, I don't change extant MOS-compliant things to "my way" (usually it's a Chicago Manual of Style conflict with a Hart's Rules thing), but I don't bother writing new material following the MOS quirk that irritates me; if someone insists on it, they can "mercilessly edit" my text later.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:25, 4 May 2014 (UTC) rev'd. 09:41, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Typically I do it my way too... until I become aware of the MOS' stance on the issue, at which point I conform to it for Wikipedia's sake. For me, it's just easier to have someone else point it out to me and then I can remember how it's actually done in the future. LazyBastardGuy 01:30, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I can't believe you've just written that after the weeks we've spent discussing this. So in other words, you don't care about the MOS, just enforcing the bits of it you believe on others? And now you're condoning someone write in title case that the rest of us can clean up like janitors after? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:48, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

@Melly42, my condolences/sympathies...but I do believe in conformity and suggest we comply to get everything looking the same....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:50, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Me ignoring a rule when writing new material (details below) isn't even vaguely comparable to a wikiproject's 9-year campaign to require all editors to capitalize bird common names (and others – it wasn't until 2008 that then-active participants in this project stopped pushing for capitalization of all species common names generally; see archives of Talk:Cougar for how super-mega-WP:LAME that got). We all know that there are too many rules for any one editor to remember most of them at any given time, much less all of them all the time. I don't fret or blame when someone forgets or ignores one of them (and assuming "forgot" is the WP:AGF thing to do); I just correct it and move on (if it's one I remember and notice). The issue is when they fight with other editors about it and the others are following MOS (or AT/NC or whatever). I don't have to condemn or condone anything. WP:IAR is policy, and if we would lose Melly42 writing an entire bird article, or a whole breeding or ecology section in an article, by telling her to stop writing if she won't lower-case the names, then by all means, yes, I "condone" her writing the names capitalized. That kind of case is precisely why IAR exists. It's counterbalanced by WP:5THWHEEL, of course – if someone is going around demanding a personal exception to every rule they don't like, on pain of them quitting, then show them the door and good riddance. Choosing to quietly invoke IAR (making a big deal about it all the time = WP:DE/WP:SOAPBOX) when actually writing new encyclopedic content is not the same as someone going around and reverting lower-case names, or otherwise being a WP:POINTy pain. As for myself, I disagree with over 20 things in MOS, and perform (or "enforce" if you want to use cop language) every single one them, with the sole exception of the bogus rule to use "c." instead of "ca." for approximate dates, because there is no reliable-sources argument for "c."[5], it's not MOS's place to specify content, and "c." is too ambiguous. I won't change "c." to "ca." where I find it, but I write "ca. 320 BCE" and move on, and no one ever cares, as far as I've seen. The "c." rule is something that has never really been discussed adequately, much less sourced properly. MOS:ABBR used to permit both abbreviations, and there was consensus to do so there, but someone removed it on a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS basis because it didn't quite agree with MOS proper; when I care enough, I'll raise the issue again at WT:MOS. I've been thinking hard about it, and all of the old Chicago points I used to IAR on are now resolved. The only IAR points I have any longer is "ca." for "circa", I think. As a second example, I firmly support people (invariably North Americans from what I can tell) who just cannot abide logical quotation, who get apoplectic about it, going ahead and writing new material using typesetters' quotation, and we'll fix it later. It's better to have the contributions of new material than the conformity. Same goes for this project pushing IOC names over regional-authority ones, BTW! Not everyone is an IOC fan, and AOU-leaning editors have been quite marginalized by the IOC boosters.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:18, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, they will be even more marginalised if we dump IOC and go back to the original article names, since most of those species which occur in the AOU and BOU regions would, under Varieties of English policy, go back to the BOU names in which they were mostly originally written. IOC is a compromise, but their Black-necked Grebe and Horned Grebe gives the yanks and the brits one each, whereas the Varieties of English policy would move the second one to Slavonian Grebe, as which it was originally written by me. I assume that you are not suggesting that we make the AOU names the default instead of IOC? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:39, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Melly42, I hope you'll reconsider. As others have pointed out, this would be poor behavior by Wikipedian standards. If you simply can't bring yourself to write bird names in sentence-case, so be it, but expect others to correct you. If they do, please don't edit war over it; it's not going to end the way you want it to. Personally, I'm sympathetic; I'm one of those people SMcCandlish is talking about regarding logical quotation, but I realize the MOS prescribes it, so I'll never fight anyone who corrects me when I deviate. --BDD (talk) 20:50, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, as someone once said, A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I personally find down-cased common names annoying and would never write one that way myself. I'm sure someone will produce a bot that can mindlessly clean up after my old-fashioned refusal to get with the MOS consensus. Chuunen Baka (talk • contribs) 09:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Incidentally, while that quotation is frequently deployed to suggest consistency isn't valuable, it has more to do with stubbornness and a refusal to change one's mind when facts do (to paraphrase Keynes). See Self-Reliance#Analysis. And whatever you think of consistency in the abstract, it is one of our core naming criteria for titles. --BDD (talk) 18:12, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Time to take the Bird Pages to a separate WIKI. The Grammer Nazi's have won. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:304:AF83:7840:477:CCEE:138B:B2BC (talk) 02:56, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

It would be a shame to leave the existing pages to the MOS fanatics. Now that they messed up the style of the bird articles they'll move on to impose their little power trips elsewhere in WP. They don't give a stuff about the content, just their bloody rules. Chuunen Baka (talk • contribs) 14:25, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Nobody owns the page content here on Wikipedia, so you are free to take it elsewhere if you want (provided you state clearly where you got it from, of course). LazyBastardGuy 17:51, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Ugh, look what happened when I was gone. I'm pretty miffed about it, but I agree with Alastair—'nobody owns Wikipedia' is a specious response, but there are more important things than capitalization, and we might was well implement this sort of consistency. —innotata 23:23, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

The MOS rule clearly ignores spelling rules outside the Wikipeda. Take Dodo for example. This name is capitilized in most books but after your spelling rule dodo should spelled lowercase. Who should take that serious? I think this is, e.g. very confusing for schools --Melly42 (talk) 16:24, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

• I don't understand why the birds were singled out. Dog and horse breed articles all have capitalised titles. Plant articles often use the scientific name as title, though the MOS states we should use common names. So why has there not been a similar uproar over them? FunkMonk (talk) 01:43, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Its all very well somebody going along changing capitals to lowercase in the title of bird articles, but that leaves a lot of work for others changing the capitalisation of the rest of each article for consistency. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:29, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Coordination

Just out of idle curiosity, does anyone know how the changeover is being coordinated? So far I've only seen bird taxon articles moved, which makes sense, since they are both obvious and easy to do, but no lists, biographies, nature reserves or bird parasites yet (unless articles I'm not watching have been moved). It would be logical to work through all pages with the Project banner systematically, but I don't know if that's actually the case.Mea culpa, I moved two articles to lc myself, since one was queried at FAC, and the other is the next in the FA production line Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:18, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

As far as I know not all bird species articles are tagged with the project tag even. Shyamal (talk) 11:19, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

The direct link to the discussion is Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 156#Bird common name decapitalisation. The more systematic approach is discusssed on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#What's needed? (see also User:JHunterJ/Articles under the category Birds by location and User:Stfg/Sandbox4). Coreyemotela (talk) 20:54, 17 May 2014 (UTC).

I spent some time going through the category tree under Category:Birds tagging articles on bird taxa that lacked the project tag. As long as the articles have some bird related category on them, every species (and higher taxon) should now have the project tag. There are still several hundred untagged articles relevant to WikiProject Birds. Category:Birds by location alone includes many articles on Important Bird Areas and ornithologists that don't have project tags yet. Plantdrew (talk) 03:25, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Birds for identification (159)

• Bird 1590. File:Lanius cristatus -Dumaguete, Negros Oriental province, Philippines-8.jpg | Is it possible to identify this Brown Shrike as a female or a juvenile? Snowman (talk) 16:25, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Looks like an adult female L. c. lucionensis. Even disregarding the date, the plumage is too developed for juvenile. Possible that it's a first winter female rather than full adult, but that's just guessing since I know almost nothing about this ssp. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 20:35, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

• Bird 1591. File:Vireo bellii -Arizona, USA-8.jpg | Bell's Vireo to confirm identification. Snowman (talk) 09:07, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Confirmed. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 03:05, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

• Bird 1592. File:Trogon elegans -Patagonia Lake State Park, Arizona, USA -female-8.jpg | Female Elegant Trogon to confirm identification. Snowman (talk) 19:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Confirmed. I want to see that! —JerryFriedman (Talk) 03:06, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

• Bird 1593. File:Brown bird -National Zoological Park, Washington, USA-8a.jpg | Bird for identification. Snowman (talk) 11:04, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• Someone on Commons moved file to File:Quiscalus quiscula, National Zoological Park, Washington DC, USA 1.jpg. Can this Common Grackle be identified as male or female? Snowman (talk) 15:09, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• Bird 1594. File:Mesophoyx intermedia 2 - Laem Pak Bia.jpg - have removed this from Intermediate Egret. The gape extends beyond eye, long bill and sinuous neck indicates Great Egret. Second opinion welcome. Shyamal (talk) 07:45, 10 April 2014 (UTC) (PS: another File:Mesophoyx_intermedia_-_Laem_Pak_Bia.jpg)

I agree; ID details indicate both are Great Egret. Nice images. Maias (talk) 23:31, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

@JJ Harrison: - please do make the corrections to your excellent images. Shyamal (talk) 06:21, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

• Bird 1595. File:Sparrow outside of Zion NP.jpg I think it is a Song Sparrow, and this bird was photographed outside of Zion NP in Utah. speednat (talk) 18:44, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Anyone please, I know it is not the best picture, but I have a little self-doubt as to whether I have been identifying these guys correct all along. speednat (talk) 16:27, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not good enough at sparrows. The Bird Identification group at Flickr is a great place to get pictures of birds identified. So is Whatbird.com, especially for American birds. If it were me, I'd crop the picture to just show the bird with a little background, but people at those places will look at uncropped pictures. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:02, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

It would be best to have a frontal view to help with the ID but based on the head markings alone it does match those of a Song Sparrow. Dger (talk) 19:03, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks all. I am actually surprised I even got the photo, as I kept hearing the bird calling in the brush, so I aimed where I heard him and started taking photos. speednat (talk) 18:18, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

• Bird 1596. File:Prinia maculosa -Rondevlei Nature Reserve, Cape Town, South Africa-8.jpg | Karoo Prinia to confirm identification. Snowman (talk) 21:18, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Confirmed. Chuunen Baka (talk • contribs) 08:10, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Shown on species page. Snowman (talk) 08:19, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Bird song files

There are a number of great recordings of bird songs, by named species, in Commons:Category:Xeno-canto and related cats. I've recently added a few, for American warblers, to articles (like this), but they really need to be added by people familiar with the species concerned, who can choose the most typical recording, or recognise any variant songs. Please assist. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:08, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Bird law redirect

I've nominated the redirect Bird law for deletion. Your input at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 May 20#Bird law would be appreciated. --BDD (talk) 18:05, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Bird law, part 2

At the RfD for Bird law, mentioned above, an editor advocated fleshing it out into an article in the mold of Animal law. I'd like to do that, but I'm having trouble finding sources. Any recommendations—or, of course, if you want to go ahead yourself—would be appreciated. --BDD (talk) 00:48, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Missing species in Strix (genus)

While updating Strix to conform with MOS:LIFE I noticed that the four species formerly assigned to Ciccaba appear to be missing from this article. I'd add them myself, but I don't know what the correct taxonomic order is. Pburka (talk) 23:53, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

You must be one of the capital warriors. Well, good luck with your destruction. Please put the light of when you are leaving, most dedicated editors seem to have left the project. 74.248.47.224 (talk) 04:38, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

That's too bad, because I'm trying to improve the encyclopedia. While proof-reading every article about owls, I'm finding a lot of problems (ranging from grammar to clear factual errors) and I'm trying to fix them as I go. I've been bringing any problems which require expert input here, hoping for collaboration. Pburka (talk) 16:18, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

The CAP warriors have essentially run of the bulk of the people who actually know something about birds. And now that you have won, you want us to keep working under those that ruined this project? I call that delusional. 74.248.46.209 (talk) 15:03, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

IOC owl list Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:08, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Pygmy owl wingspan

While updating pygmy owl to conform with MOS:LIFE I noticed a suspicious measurement. The article claims that the wingspan of pygmies ranges from 86 to 105 mm. This would make them smaller than some dragonflies and most hummingbirds, and given the described length (17 to 19 cm), would be oddly disproportionate. Unfortunately, the claim is unreferenced, and I can't find wingspan measurements in any of the species articles, so I can't easily correct it. I presume that the author intended cm rather than mm. Can someone with more experience in this topic take a look? Pburka (talk) 02:18, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I've removed this and some other questionable claims from the article. If another editor wishes to add it back please correct it and add refs. Thanks. Pburka (talk) 03:44, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Just to give you an initial idea, the wingspans of the Northern and Ferruginous Pygmy-Owls are 12 inches (30 cm), according to the first edition of Sibley. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:14, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

European is 34cm wingspan. The figures you removed are wrong whatever the unit, best left out Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:12, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks User:Jimfbleak. As I examined more of the articles even the length seemed suspect, as several species are smaller than 17 cm. Pburka (talk) 00:00, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Eurasian is 15-19cm long. The length range is probably GF, but unless someone has checked all the species, it's fairly meaningless to give a numerical range. Very small is probably good enough Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:40, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Poultry

I have proposed the creation of WikiProject Poultry; if you are interested please see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals/Poultry_(proposal_2) JTdale ^Talk 12:03, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Are there even enough editors who specialise in that to support an entire project? FunkMonk (talk) 12:40, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Not sure. There are some I know of but that is the point, to gauge interest. Sorry I didn't reply earlier, forgot to follow this page. JTdale ^Talk 13:06, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Of course, the success of this new project will depend on the number of editors interested. If you can not get it off the ground, then I expect that poultry can be incorporated into WP Birds. I have recently bought two books on chickens, but I do not anticipate being a big contributor to poultry pages. I set up a geographical WP Project and it is still active, but it can be hard to get it going without many members. Good luck. Snowman (talk) 08:37, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Taxo boxes

Am I right in assuming that there should only be a taxo box on article pages describing the species and not on other pages describing animals? Eg domestic breed pages don't need a taxo box? --Tony Wills (talk) 12:39, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Domestic breeds might get a different box - see Rhode Island Red, for instance. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 18:41, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Most domestic breeds have a dedicated infobox. See Category:Animal infobox templates. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:38, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

House finch

Could someone help answer the question I posted at User_talk:Rothorpe#House_finch? CorinneSD (talk) 00:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I've responded to this one here. MeegsC (talk) 01:52, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

An egg question

Could someone please help with this question: User_talk:Anna_Frodesiak#Bird's eggs. Many thanks, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:01, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I have replied over there with a brief explanation, and I trust that this will enable the person who is asking these questions to be able to amend the article appropriately. Note that many bird page editors are not now editing bird pages following the impositions of lower-case capitalization imposed on bird names by Wiki MoS enthusiasts. Snowman (talk) 07:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Videos of birds

A Dutch editor has arranged the donation of 500+ high-quality, uncut videos of birds like this. The announcement is on Commons, along with suggestions about how to link the files. Please consider looking at these to see whether any would improve our articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:11, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Nice, seems they all need English descriptions and species categorisation, though. Quite a task! FunkMonk (talk) 16:07, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

I only know English. The videos seem to be labelled with common name of birds in Dutch. I do not see any binomial names. If I had a list of Dutch bird names alongside the binomial names (or the English names), then I think that I could do the lot with a script (but not until the Autumn in the UK). Nevertheless, it would be handy to have a Dutch and English speaking bilingual person to help. I am not promising anything. Snowman (talk) 08:50, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

One method could be cross-checking names with the Dutch Wikipedia. For example, in this file[6], the name is "Blauwe kiekendief". Searching that on the Dutch Wiki gives me this[7], and thus a link back to the English article. Furthermore, binomials are shown under notes in some files, including that one. FunkMonk (talk) 09:39, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

That looks like it would work. There are many ways of doing this that will work. I would be looking for the simplest way. I could get the binomial from the Dutch page and then convert that to the English name or more simply use a list of Dutch names with the binomial names. I have already written scrips for other tasks that do nearly this sort of thing, so I could use blocks of these scripts to get something to work for this task. I have got efficient blocks of scrip that interchange binomials and English names. Snowman (talk) 10:49, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

In all the files I looked at the binomial names were in the notes tag words section, the only other two-word tag was generally the dutch common name --Tony Wills (talk) 11:27, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I see; the binomial name is in the notes section entirely in lower case. The script will not need to look at the Dutch Wiki, because I could write a script to make use of the binomial name in the "notes" field. Snowman (talk) 14:29, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Of course, this sort of work to images is done on Commons, where upper-case bird common names apply. Actually, the writing of the script is beginning to look reasonably easy, but I will need an hour or two of protected time to concentrate and marshall an organized approach, a task for me in the Autumn (August or September in the UK). I would think that it would be a good idea for WP Bird editors to enhance the text of the en Wiki pages for these images to show our appreciation to the generous photographer who donated the video collection to Commons. I am not promising anything. Snowman (talk) 07:58, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet for Wikiproject Birds at Wikimania 2014 (updated version)

please note: This is an updated version of a previous post that I made.

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

The deadline for submissions is 1st July 2014

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:

Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 09:00, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I note that one group of people are trying to recruit WP Bird editors with leaflets. Another group of people have imposed lower-case capitalization on WP Birds, which has had the effect of causing many bird editors to feel belittled. How ironic is this? Snowman (talk) 08:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Rusty Blackbird

I have a question about the article on the Rusty Blackbird. It is in the "Habitat" section. The first few sentences read:

"Their breeding habitat is wet temperate coniferous forests and muskeg across Canada and Alaska. The cup nest is located in a tree or dense shrub, usually over water. Birds often nest at the edge of ponds/wetland complexes and travel large distances to feed at the water's edge."

I don't understand why rusty blackbirds "travel large distances to feed at the water's edge" when

• Their nest "is located...usually over water", and

• they "often nest at the edge of ponds/wetland complexes".

Perhaps the word "sometimes" (or "often", if necessary), should be added before "travel large distances". I'm not a bird expert, so I'm posting this here. CorinneSD (talk) 22:00, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Also, since the article says that males have an iridescent green head, it would be nice to have a photo showing that. The large photo that is there is nice, but it doesn't show the iridescent green head. CorinneSD (talk) 22:08, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

My reference books show that the nest is indeed often placed over water. They say nothing about the birds traveling long distances to feed, so I wonder if someone misunderstood something they read. Personally, I'd remove the sentence that begins "Birds often nest at the edge…" MeegsC (talk) 02:27, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I deleted the part about flying long distances to feed and re-arranged the sentence. I wanted to keep "Birds often nest at the edge" because that paints a clearer picture than the information in the previous sentence. I also reversed "often" and "usually". What do you think of it now? CorinneSD (talk) 18:33, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Red-winged blackbird

I'm reading the article on Red-winged blackbirds, and I have come across something that is unclear to me. It is in the second paragraph in the section "Taxonomy". The sentence reads:

"The taxonomy of this form is little understood, with the relationships between the two isolated bi-colored populations, and between these and red-winged, still unclear."

Maybe I missed something, but I don't know what "the two isolated bi-colored populations" refers to. The word "isolated" to describe red-winged blackbirds was used in the lead to refer to several populations in Central American countries, but it didn't seem like two.

The two bicolored populations mentioned are those of A. p. gubernator in California and central Mexico; they're discussed two sentences previous to the sentence you've pasted above. These two populations are discrete (the birds in California are separated by hundreds of miles from the ones in central Mexico) and both populations are distinct from other Red-winged Blackbirds. There are some ornithologists who feel these represent a distinct species—the Bicolored Blackbird. MeegsC (talk) 02:40, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Please note that I added a hyphen to "bicolored" because it appears in Edit Mode with a red line under it as misspelled. Also, I believe it should have a hyphen. If I am correct, then the caption that contains the same word needs to have the hyphen added, too. CorinneSD (talk) 23:01, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, "bicolored" is in the Oxford dictionary, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary without the hyphen. It's also listed without a hyphen in the dictionary on my Apple. MeegsC (talk) 01:57, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

O.K. Thank you. I'll remove the hyphen. But what about my other question in this comment, above? CorinneSD (talk) 18:34, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I have another question. This may seem like a silly question, but why is the red-winged blackbird called a "bicolored" bird, or species? I just looked at the photo in the article and the bird is black with a stripe of red and yellow-orange on its wings. Red and yellow-orange are two colors, and if black is counted, that's three. Is black not considered a color? Or is the red and yellow-orange stripe counted as only one color? CorinneSD (talk) 18:40, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

The black is ignored, it's to distinguish the (sub)species from the tricolored blackbird, which has white as well as red in its wing stripe Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:52, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Jim. I just wonder, though, why the tricolored blackbird is named with "tri-". In the picture there is only a red and white stripe. Where's the third color? Maybe in the red-winged blackbird, the red and yellow-orange is considered one color, so that plus black makes two, and in the tricolored blackbird, the red and white are considered two, so those two plus black makes three. CorinneSD (talk) 20:19, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

@MeegsC: Did you see my reply to your answer, above, re the spelling of "bicolored"? CorinneSD (talk) 20:19, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

@CorinneSD: Yep; my answer to your first question is right underneath your question!  :) MeegsC (talk) 21:07, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I am so sorry, @MeegsC:. I just didn't see it. Maybe I assumed you would respond to both questions after my comment.

I've copied most of the paragraph here to make it easier to refer to:

"There are a number of subspecies, some of doubtful status, which are mostly quite similar in appearance, but the bicolored blackbird A. p. gubernator of California and central Mexico is distinctive. The male lacks the yellow wing patch of the nominate race, and the female is much darker than the female nominate. The taxonomy of this form is little understood, with the relationships between the two isolated bicolored populations, and between these and red-winged, still unclear."

I hear what you're saying, but the fact that those two bicolored blackbird groups in central Mexico and California are the isolated groups referred to two sentences later is not clear. I'm going to make a minor edit to make this clearer.

Also, I still don't understand why those two species are called bicolored. It says that the male of the species in central Mexico and the species in California "lacks the yellow wing patch of the nominate race". That means it has red, but not yellow, on its wing. So it is called bicolored because its colors are yellow and black -- two colors. That means black is counted as a color (see @Jimfbleak:'s comment, above, and my reply to him). Then the red-winged blackbird has three colors: red, yellow, and black, so is really tricolored. (In my comment, above, I asked why the tricolored blackbird was called tricolored if it had only red and white, if black was not counted as a color.) (Also see the section Talk:Red-winged blackbird#Bicoloured Blackbird. CorinneSD (talk) 21:48, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Those two populations (not species, as the two are populations of the same subspecies) are called "Bicolored" because the males only have two colors: red and black; they lack the gold bar on the epaulet. Most Red-winged Blackbird subspecies have black, red and gold — three colors, as you've mentioned. I'm not sure why Jim said the black didn't count as a color — you'd have to ask him! ;) MeegsC (talk) 22:01, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

So the regular red-winged blackbird is not a bicolored blackbird. CorinneSD (talk) 22:09, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Correct. The "regular" Red-winged Blackbird has three colors. MeegsC (talk) 23:27, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

What is the Atlantic gull?

Question as topic. I heard this name mentioned the other day. Anyone know? Is it another example of one of those subspecies that some consider to be a full species? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 13:32, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

From the Birdwatch Magazine website

Another potential good species from the Azores, and much publicised after claims of individuals in Britain and Ireland, is Atlantic Gull, the highly distinctive local form of Yellow-legged Gull. This insular taxon seems close to the ancestral ‘Yellow-leg’ and has diagnosable plumages at all ages, but particularly in its first-year and adult winter stages.

This larid exists in its strictest sense only on the Azores. However, forms intermediate in plumage detail appear to make up a stepped or clumped cline across the Canaries, Madeira, Morocco, Spain and Portugal, implying that a ‘clean’ split may be tricky. Regular or intermittent genetic introgression through hybridisation may also hinder true divergence in this form, and the DNA of the Portuguese lusitanicus appears to be intermediate between michahellis and atlantis.

Obvious features include dense head streaking in typical adult winter plumage, forming a discrete diffuse dark grey hood. Juveniles are closer to Lesser Black-backed Gull or even American Herring Gull in appearance, but all ages and plumages really need good images and notes describing a wide combination of features to clinch identification and exclude aberrant plumages of other large white-headed gull species. There have probably been at least 30 reports in Britain and Ireland so far, but none yet accepted.

A potential split, but not recognized yet. MeegsC (talk) 13:41, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. So this would be the subspecies Larus michahellis atlantis then? If so, I'll add a little bit about the Atlantic gull name to the Yellow-legged gull article... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 15:27, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Yep, that's the correct subspecies. MeegsC (talk) 18:50, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Cheers. Info added and redirect created. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:43, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm out

I waited a while to cool down, but my thoughts have not changed. I'm done with Wikipedia. Fundamentalist dogma of those who have no knowledge of specifics topics has overridden long-established norms. But that's not why I'm posting.

I think we like-minded folks should devote our time an resources to a different wiki that will actually respect our decades (centuries?) of combined knowledge instead of calling us stupid. Is there not an online bird encyclopedia somewhere that we could all flock to? Surely, it could be better than anything here. Natureguy1980 (talk) 03:33, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

That would be a catastrophe - we want to appeal to (and spread knowledge to) general readers as well as bird enthusiasts - if folks set up a birdpedia, only a small fraction of people would read the articles there as wikipedia would trump it on google searches. Then we'd have worse wikipedia articles which lots of people would see, and birdpedia articles which only a few people would see. A loss all round. One of the benefits of this place is the sheer number of editors, we commonly benefit from copyediting and queries from other editors - that would all be lost if folks left. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia is only at the top because there are no credible alternatives. Once there is a credible alternative for birds, and enough specialists are linking to it instead of Wikipedia, those pages will start showing up at the top of the top of search engines. The bigger issue is who is going to pay for the hosting and who is willing to write the governance articles so that the new Bird Wiki does not get overrun by the non-experts with too much time to harass the experts. Expert retention is abysmal at Wikipedia, and any wiki that can do a better job at that will be able to concur the top spots in search engines purely because of the improved quality of pages. 74.248.53.244 (talk) 16:56, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

If you are interested in being the subject of an exit interview for Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost, then I am willing to mention that fact at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions. I am particularly interested in knowing what advice you have for new editors. You can contribute to Avibase - The World Bird Database.

Sure. My contact information is listed at http://www.aba.org/birdersguide/editor.html 98.223.105.116 (talk) 22:17, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

—Wavelength (talk) 04:53, 1 July 2014 (UTC) and 04:58, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

@Wavelength:, I think it would be a good idea to give exit interviews to several people who've left not just this project but Wikipedia altogether thanks to the attitude of some MOS folks. Given that the encyclopedia is hemorrhaging editors, it should be a real concern that lack of civility by some of the main MOS players is one of the major reasons these editors are leaving. Perhaps the article could be about more productive ways of disagreeing with other editors without alienating them. MeegsC (talk) 16:39, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to see you go, but understandable given not only the jackboot approach to volunteer contributors and the entirely predictable wreckage left behind with, with hundreds of article either not downcased at all or, worse only partially downcased because the fanatics turned out not to be fanatical enough to do the hard graft required. Easier to move on and bully someone else Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:37, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

• Someone should make a notice of the damage this decision has done. I'm still puzzled why many domestic breed titles are all caps, and why many plant articles do not use common names in the titles. Seems this project was rather arbitrarily chosen for standardisation enforcement. FunkMonk (talk) 10:22, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Michael, I was going to leave for the same reasons—and with the same thought. But I came around the thinking about the effect our mass exodus would have on Wikipedia's readers, who — as Cas rightly pointed out — are not likely to follow us to some Birdpedia, unfortunately. So I'm gritting my teeth and putting up with the few jerks who are ruining the place for many of us (and who've now moved on to make the horse project's articles their battleground). And you're absolutely right, Jim. Only one or two of the MOS folks are actually changing the article text as well as the titles. The rest just tripped merrily along downcasing article names for a day or two (if they bothered to do that much), and then got bored with the lack of drama and went elsewhere. Predictable, really. MeegsC (talk) 14:03, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

If I may suggest, if you 1) focus on articles of specialized topics that have few people who can know the subject matter; and/or 2) focus on articles belonging to a WikiProject that projects a positive attitude, you might have better traction. (Or perhaps I should reserve this comment as a response to the published exit interview.) -- kosboot (talk) 00:08, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I am very sorry to see this happen too. The exit interview idea is definitely a good idea. I think some of the most zealous style-over-substance supporters may well be long-term detractors of Wikipedia whose main aim is perhaps to destroy the long-term editor-base. There is a rational basis but there is also tradition involved and it is unfortunate that some otherwise valuable contributors have taken the side of the rational basis for down-casing without noticing that some of the main detractors are opposed to the fact that specialists contribute to Wikipedia. Apparently there is now a brigade that is up against all those, mainly the substantial authors of shipping related articles, who use "she" to refer to ships and want the style-guide to rule the use of "it". Northcote Parkinson, who was a maritime researcher himself, would surely have seen the reason for those walls of text - Parkinson's law of triviality Shyamal (talk) 02:14, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

For the record, I'm sure people have left for other than the downcasing issue.....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:35, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right Pvmoutside, but the fact remains that we've lost at least three solid editors (Sabine's Sunbird, Chuunen Baka and Natureguy1980) over this particular issue. And that's important. In too much of the Wikipedia universe, there is subtle (and not so subtle) harassment of content experts, most of whom have far more profitable (and far less stressful) things to do than edit Wikipedia! Push hard enough, and they will leave. And all of Wikipedia's many readers lose out as a result. MeegsC (talk) 18:47, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Southern boobook (Ninox boobook)

The Ninox page lists the southern boobook as a separate species (Ninox boobook), but our page just redirects to morepork. According to [8] it is distinct, and [9] indicates that they were formerly classified together, but are now considered distinct. There's more info about the taxonomical history here. Is this taxonomy generally accepted? If so, we should create a proper page for the southern boobook and link to it from morepork. Pburka (talk) 20:32, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

We take the IOC world list as our standard. The IOC owl list gives Southern as a separate species, so it should have its own article Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:46, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I was looking into this - there is some dispute going on, but am inclined to agree. There is a key paper I will have to get via library to clarify it. Just about all the info in the article is on the NZ taxon, so I think the correct thing is to rename it morepork and move it to preserve edit history and then back-create southern boobook. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:10, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Good to know that you give authority to the IOC list, Jim; do you also follow them for Latin names? (E.g. when there is difference of opinion about which genus a species belongs to?) Pelagic (talk) 00:51, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Good question. I suppose that I tend to do so except for species where I have to look closely at the taxonomy, for example at FAC. I would then discuss the options and the evidence for them. I have very little knowledge of these southern owls, and I would take the IOC on trust simply through ignorance Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:56, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Pburka, was N. boobook previously a subspecies of N. novaseelandiae, or vice versa? I can't access Christidis & Boles on Google Scholar (have already exceeded page allowance), and I don't have access to a paper copy. For what it's worth, I do have a copy of Simpson & Day (Field Guide to the Birds of Australia, 7ed., p. 156) on loan from the library: Simpson is sitting on the fence by listing Southern Boobook as "Ninox boobook (novaseelandiae)". That book is big on documenting races/subspecies: it lists 5 Australian races: boobook, ocellata, leucopsis, halmaturina, lurida. Pelagic (talk) 00:51, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Neither as such - the name N. novaseelandiae was used for the combined species as it is older that N. boobook - once split they are split along the lines of which subpsecies the specimens were types of. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:22, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

There are still some authorities which treat it as subspecies, e.g. Clements (2012). König & Weick (2008) treat it as species, HBW 5 (1999) too. According to Howard & Moore - Non passerines (2013) I can say more when I have this book in a few weeks. --Melly42 (talk) 06:28, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there is by no means consensus on this one - and I need to read a paper I can't get online to get my head around it - issues with incomplete genetic sampling and one paper apparently misreading another etc. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:11, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I think, if the majority of authorities considered it as full species there is nothing said against an own Wikipedia article (and if you take a look in König & Weick and/or HBW 5 (resp. HBW alive) there is even enough stuff about this species --Melly42 (talk) 07:18, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

In H&M (2013) we have Ninox boobook with 10 subspecies and Ninox novaeseelandiae with 3 subspecies --Melly42 (talk) 17:02, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

So long, and thanks for all the fish

Well, I was coming back after a period of burnout and real life stuff, and it seems I missed a victory by the grammar authoritarians. Ho hum. So, first off, sorry I wasn't here to help. I mean, I always knew they were going to win eventually, Wikipedia has been heading in the direction of minimum tolerance and maximum conformity for a while. But anyway, perhaps it could have been held off longer.

Second, that's all folks. I've had a a great time here over the years and have really enjoyed working here on the project. We've turned out some great articles and done a lot of stellar work. But the shift from the goal of this place being getting as much info out there as possible and the goal of making it all consistent to some arbitrary standard has been coming a long time, and this was the line in the sand I drew that represented as far as I was going. Maybe Wikipedia will again one day respect those that know, write and cite as much as it loves the minutiae of its rules. I really hope it does. But for the moment it will have to do so without me.

I owe a lot to Wikipedia and in particular this project. I realise this is a rather drama-ish exit, but then Wikipedia was always about the drama as much as the writing. And I really wanted to say goodbye to those of you I've been working with on this project for the last decade (you can always reach me by email!). Goodbye, and best of luck. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:46, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, good luck - go and do some Original Research.. ;) Cas Liber (talk · contribs)

Good luck from me too. I've taken the less drastic step of chopping hundreds of pages off my bird watchlist to concentrate on species pages I've significantly contributed to, and those that are on the British list — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimfbleak (talk • contribs)

Sad to see but good luck. We have also lost User:MeegsC thanks to the increasingly rough editing environment. Shyamal (talk) 10:22, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Another keen editor alienated by the WP elite and they neither notice nor care. Sorry to see you go. Chuunen Baka (talk • contribs) 11:24, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Tall poppy syndrome - the bird project has been too successful. It attracted the attention of those that felt threatened, a common organisational dynamic. Maias (talk) 13:44, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree that this was a terribly bad decision, but really, does it invalidate everything else we've achieved, as a project and as an encyclopedia? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:10, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm no, but the comments by various people at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_156#Bird_common_name_decapitalisation against anyone that supported capitalisation were pretty demeaning. And were I suspect the last nail in the coffin for the enthusiasm of some editors. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:54, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Even funnier, the editor that started the whole issue this time round was a sock of a blocked user Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:57, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I noticed one IP popping up from time to time with rather pointy edits on the crowed crane DAB, but I can not prove anything. Snowman (talk) 08:27, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I opposed the change and thought I could live with it. But when everything turning up on my watchlist is the down-casing of bird names, it just feels wrong. I'm not a big contributor so I won't be missed. But good luck to anyone left. Chuunen Baka (talk • contribs) 08:12, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to hear that, Chuunen Baka and Sabine's Sunbird. Sad losses, both. I too left, fed up with the hassle from a few people (you know who you are) who make it their business to piss off as many people as possible for no other reason than that they can. After cooling off, though, I've decided that I'm not going to let the bullies win, so I'll continue to contribute content — which, after all, is the most important part of the encyclopedia. And I'll just ignore and avoid those who make my blood pressure go up. Soldier on, everybody. Let's get back to what's really important here, which is building a great resource! MeegsC (talk) 15:06, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I also opposed the decision, but has it actually been implemented in full? Maybe, I don't know. It is really very sad to see the impact on some really solid editors. Johnbod/ Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 22:04, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

It amuses me that those who have decided it is so important to change the capitalisation are spending so many hours doing it all manually, I assume they haven't actually got any content to contribute, or simply prefer form over substance. Perhaps we should request that they get a bot-bit for their accounts so that we can at least ignore their automaton-like edits which overwhelm watchlists. --Tony Wills (talk) 12:35, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't care about capitalisation at all actually, I'm merely saving others from burning out on such a massive task. Do keep casting aspersions though. —Xezbeth (talk) 17:14, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I suspect that you are right, the people executing these changes have no great interest in or understanding of what they are part of - very sad. I'm not a member of this project, but have watched the way this change was bulldozed through, and now are apparently watching dis-interested parties participating in this destructive, pointless excercise. It is destructive of the community of people who are dedicated to maintaining the pages covered by this project because it dismisses their opinions and standards in the name of conforming to some other standard. I expect this project will carry on more or less as usual, but now with a little less enthusiasm, feeling their input is a little less valued. --Tony Wills (talk) 21:33, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Lets not get all maudlin about this, it's the content that is important not the style. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:52, 23 June 2014 (UTC).

Try telling MoS that. And we now have inconsistency because even the fanatics aren't prepared to downcase the big lists like list of hummingbirds and list of birds of Canada and the United States Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:07, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Jim, most of the loudest voices at MOS couldn't give a toss about those inconsistencies. They're now off harassing the horse people about their article titles, because everyone knows that the use of capital letters for animal names is the main reason most experts don't think Wikipedia is a reliable reference. Despite what you might have thought, the belief that Wikipedia might not be reliable has nothing to do with some articles possessing such gems as "Eric eats poop" or various snippets of patently incorrect information. It was all about those danged capital letters! *Rolls eyes*. MeegsC (talk) 03:09, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

And yet here I've been told that the fact that we have Aeshna cyanea (binomial), small tortoiseshell (lc English) and Red Underwing (capped English) isn't a matter for MoS! Predictably, they did the easy articles, and then moved on to persecute other content creators rather than tackle more time consuming stuff. On a more positive note, having 2000 less bird articles on my watch list makes life easier. Perhaps I should go the whole hog and just dot "i"s and cross "t"s, since that's more important than content? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:04, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I understand why having lower-case names imposed on the WP Bird project is the last straw for many. Being a armature in ornithology myself, I will miss the expertise of those who are leaving particularly in the "Birds for identification" series. I anticipate that I will find and upload more photographs that need identification probably in the late Autumn (September or August), when the weather starts to get wintery here in the UK. I hope that some of you will help me to identify birds for the fun of it and for the birds. For any of you that do return, I hope that we can make this project be a happy project again. I thought about leaving over the capitalization issue, but writing about parrots and illustrating bird pages has higher priority than capitalization for me. I am not promising anything. Snowman (talk) 08:27, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I note that the people who are changing to lower-case are sometimes just changing the page name without changing the capitalization in the body of the article. I have not seen anyone change the capitalization in lists of birds yet. I think that the people who want to deliver lower-case capitalization to about 16,000 bird pages do not have the machinery to do it properly. I think that we should complain about the inconsistent mess that this is causing. Does anyone want to go into battle (metaphorically speaking) over this saying that the change over to lower-case is not going well and that the upper-case tradition here should be kept? I am not promising anything. Snowman (talk) 08:13, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

On the positive side, I have heard (see below) that a kind professional photographer has donated about 300 good-quality videos of birds, some of them with sound, to Commons. Upper-case bird names are used on Commons. I am planning to process them all with a script to write in the English names, binomial names, and the taxonomy categories on Commons. I hope to see as many bird editors back here in the Autumn of the Western Hemisphere (August to September) to see if we can put every informative video in an improved bird species page. I am not promising anything. Snowman (talk) 08:13, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I feel bad now. I've only recently developed an interest in some of the bird articles, after the decapitalisation was already decided. So I've been merrily lowercasing names as I make other edits. Personally, I prefer uppercase (for me a "bald eagle" is a bird with a skin condition causing feather loss on its head, whereas Bald Eagle is something specific). But I thought I was doing the right thing by "following the rules". Sorry that you're leaving, Sunbird. Pelagic (talk) 23:50, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Noticing this discussion I just took on List of birds of Canada and the United States. It was a lot of work to do right. I never felt very strongly either way on the underlying issue of whether these moves should be done, but I have been involved in page moves (closing RMs and the like) for a long time and I think it's outrageous that people would move all these articles without attempting to address the content, as represented above. I'm wondering if they took on other necessary cleanup tasks attend on moves (noted at WP:RM/CI).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:34, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Laughing chicken

I can't find any online sources for this bird, other than the one source already listed (which is far for reliable). Does this bird actually exist? Does anyone have any more reliable sources? Sotakeit (talk) 12:59, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

It might be worth asking User:DrChrissy. He's a chicken guy of some description, I think. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 15:53, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Some googling managed to work out this 'laughing chicken' is Ayam Ketawa. id:Ayam ketawa. The Indonesian language article seems to be much more detailed and would suggest it is real. I suggest using google translate to let you have some grasp of what the article says. There are also quite a few youtube videos of this breed floating around. JTdale ^Talk 16:05, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Afraid I can not really help on this one. I have never heard of the Laughing chicken, but I am sure there are many breeds I have not heard of. I will chat with a poultry expert friend next time I see him.__DrChrissy (talk) 16:59, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Of interest

ANI of possible interest to members of this project: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Undiscussed_page_moves_by_SMcCandlish. Montanabw^(talk) 18:48, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Strix omanensis

• According to ICZN a nomen dubium http://iczn.org/simpletaxonomy/term/631 --Melly42 (talk) 13:03, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Best to wait and watch. There are enough taxonomists who do not like Liocichla bugunorum Bugun Liocichla since the holotype only consists of samples of feathers and blood and photos (not to mention Homo sapiens). Shyamal (talk) 11:36, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Amazon parrots

Just to confirm - the 'Amazon' in the species names of these parrots refers to the Amazon rainforest, and thus as a proper noun, should always be capitalized, correct? I think that this is the case...

I see that User:Julia W has today moved a few of the Amazon species articles to lower-case 'a' titles per the recent decapitalization decision, e.g. Red-lored amazon. Should these be moved back? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 21:58, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

I wondered this myself and therefore looked and found that other amazon articles had been moved. I figured that they knew better than me and therefore was okay to move more of them. My knowledge of English says that they should be lower-case but happy to be corrected. Julia\^talk 22:02, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Julia, thanks for the reply - I was just about to put a message on your talkpage. I think that saying Amazon parrot would be just like saying American robin, or Malagasy kestrel (under the new caps rules), assuming that I'm correct on the etymology... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:10, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Generally, Amazon is a proper noun and should be capitalized. Certainly when used in an adjective form (e.g. Amazon duck) it would be. But when used as a noun that may not be the case. For example, when referring to hummingbirds, the word inca is not capitalized (at least in sources which don't capitalize every word in species name). The best thing to do is to find a source which uses lowercase names, and follow their example. A quick scan of Google books shows that most sources capitalize (e.g. red-lored Amazon parrot). (Although at least one does not.) Pburka (talk) 22:14, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

As another data point, Merriam-Webster suggests that upper- or lower-case is acceptable:

often capitalized : any of a genus (Amazona) of tropical American parrots typically having green plumage marked with other bright colors

Pburka (talk) 22:32, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Interesting conundrum. I would have thought the derivation was removed enough from Amazon River that the geographical upper case was not compulsory. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:58, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

And then you have willie wagtail and jacky winter... what a can of nematodes... Maias (talk) 08:26, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

When I think of (A/a)mazon parrots, my immediate thought is 'parrots of the Amazon rainforest' (even though some of them aren't!). How should we resolve this? Pburka says that most sources he's found do specifically capitalize it. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 16:09, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

I propose we capitalize Amazon:

1. A very brief survey indicates that more sources capitalize it,
2. A major dictionary accepts capitalized Amazon as correct (but optional),
3. It is (in my judgement) least likely to surprise readers, whether or not they are experts in the field.

(As for the wagtail and winter, examine the sources and tell us what you find.)

Pburka (talk) 17:25, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

The only really relevant results for this question will be from those sources that capitalise as white-fronted Amazon and Willie wagtail. Anything capitalised White-fronted Amazon and Willie Wagtail would be disqualified. A preliminary search of Google Books indicates that willie wagtail is very acceptable. The origin of Jacky winter is obscure; at least one source says that jacky is merely a common affectionate term, like willie, and winter is just because it sings all winter long, unlike other birds. Jacky dragon has no issues with lower-casing jacky. Julia\^talk 17:59, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

"white-fronted Amazon" is patently ridiculous — and is a direct result of this whole fiasco. Given the current MOS standards, I'd suggest it be lower-cased. MeegsC (talk) 23:22, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

I dunno really, it looks strange - but 'white-fronted amazon' looks wrong too. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 04:48, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Asked at the language desk! Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Amazon or amazon. Julia\^talk 05:10, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Interestingly, the entry for "amazon" at Oxford Dictionaries has a lowercase definition, but all of its example usages are uppercase. Gabbe (talk) 07:56, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Amazonia is a name for the Amazon jungle. This is capitalized. I presume "Amazon" is meant to imply the region of Amazonia and not just the river. I think that it would be logical to capitalize the bird name too. Arctic is also capitalized, as in Arctic Tern. Snowman (talk) 11:29, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Flight Feather Taxonomy

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Flight_feather

Our current page on flight feathers hasn't went into enough detail into the flight feather forms that are meaningful to flight on specific avian species.

The page provides wonderful sources and an excellent skeleton of the names of classifications used to classify flight feathers, but it brutishly assumes that all birds or (most) use the same similar systems of flight feathers in the article and additionally hasn't continued into any actual classification systems past the definition and summary of the systems. Our various sources also suffer from this acute (narrow) sight and generalize many flight feather arrangements to many species from only a single species.

It may not be deep enough for readers who are interested in the actual classification of flight feathers, rather than just the assorted types and names of classification systems that are currently used.

We need the attention of experienced avian experts to add more meaningful categorical information relating to specific birds (corvus albicollis) which may differ from the rigid classifications provided in the article's source. Please include this information in meticulous detail, or if necessary pictorially.

(Have any of you ever classified the feather systems of certain common species within a family such as Corvidae? Research on the feather patterns of naturally occurring species within Corvidae (crows, magpies, jays) is rare and, as a result, the feather patterns page is restricted by the dearth of this research online. If anyone can contribute or if anyone has any research to present that hasn't been cited and provides new, meaningful content, please!) — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnHarroway (talk • contribs)

The first few paragraphs may perhaps hold for some fossil groups, but this article should be fairly enough to give you the basics and allow you to examine the specifics of the plumage of a Corvus albicollis. You can also look up feather images for related species (see for instance this) on http://www.fws.gov/lab/featheratlas. Shyamal (talk) 13:26, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me

Here is what happens if you express dissent with the MoS warriors. Whatever happened to freedom of expression? At this rate I might get blocked before I become yet another editor bullied off the project Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:52, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

And if you leave nobody will know why I'd revert the edit, but he's just itching to block me. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:01, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

That edit is pretty shocking. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 02:18, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

You're not alone, Jim. I reverted it, and he's threatened to ban me. Where can one go to report bullying when reporting it will get you banned? (Natureguy1980) (I was alerted to the recent happenings by an editor I know in real-life.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.223.105.116 (talk) 06:31, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

ANI is the obvious place, but with both of us User John has made it clear that he will unilaterally block editors who say things he doesn't like, despite being involved in this debate. ANI is the place to complain, but my invitation to take me there was ignored. Don't hope for a colleagual outcome Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:56, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Cas, any chance that, as a fellow admin who's kept his head down so far, you could talk with John about this? Or could you suggest an uninvolved bureaucrat who might make an impression re: the bullying? That's really not on, and must, surely, be addressed! MeegsC (talk) 10:21, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

• Wow. By this rate, Wikipedia will remain a collection of stubs, yet a nicely standardised one. FunkMonk (talk) 20:20, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

no shit. Montanabw^(talk) 21:08, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Yep. It's surely a wicked little cabal there, isn't it?! God forbid you should actually say it's a certain editor you have problems with! What's particularly "hilarious" is that on his own talk page, John (talk · contribs) asks for proof that people left because of a particular editor — and then deftly removes that proof. It's easy to suppress the truth when you just delete it and threaten to ban any editor that puts it back. Wicked, wicked, wicked. MeegsC (talk) 23:34, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Heh, see here.  ;-) Montanabw^(talk) 02:24, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

I am just looking for the right venue to discuss this. Discussing it with John alone is pointless, so seeking an interpretation of what is and is not considered a personal attack is probably the most prudent. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:34, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree up to a point, but it's important to involve John in particular. He is an admin, and is redacting comments he doesn't like and/or threatening editors with unilateral blocks without benefit of trial at ANI, despite being involved in this issue. I'm sure he can justify his actions to himself, but they are perceived as being one-sided, with the MoS people being able to use whatever language or tone they wish. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:22, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

There is discussion ongoing on his talk page - I'll comment over there later. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:09, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

I'll admit I have not fully grasped the situation here yet, but I will also admit to being increasingly concerned, as a relatively new editor, at the surprising levels of systematic hostility I have repeatedly observed at Wikipedia to date. Are we not all here to make the best encyclopedia we can? Are we not brothers that need to put our differences aside and find common ground for the greater good? Best, Jim Jim-Siduri (talk) 05:00, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

I am also surprised at how antagonistic some people can be on the Wiki. As far as I am aware, hostility is worse against experts writing in their own area of expertise. Snowman (talk) 22:20, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Domestic animal breed disambiguation

Thread retitled from "Of possible interest".

I am revising the heading of this section from Of possible interest (attitudinal information) to Domestic animal breed disambiguation (topical information), in harmony with WP:TPOC, point 12 (Section headings). Please see Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines. The new heading facilitates recognition of the topic in links and watchlists and tables of contents.

—Wavelength (talk) 18:47, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

There's a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Toward a standard for disambiguating titles of articles on domestic animal breeds which may be of interest to this project. It's not clear to me why SMcCandlish did not mention it here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:15, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

[I am correcting two links, in harmony with WP:TPOC (point 8: Fixing format errors).

—Wavelength (talk) 17:48, 29 July 2014 (UTC)]

Bird names in lower case

At Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 156#Bird common name decapitalisation (WP:BIRDCON), the closing decision at 01:33, 1 May 2014, contains this statement.

• Thus, bird names in WP should follow the general rule for animal names, which I understand to be lower case except when the word would otherwise be capitalized in English.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:51, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

So what's your point? Are you saying it's OK to lose good editors because style is more important than content? McCandlish, the leader of the MoS battle group makes no bones about losing editors being a small price to pay. His battleground mentality is why he is the subject of a move ban discussion at WP:ANI, since he has just ridden roughshod over good editors' contributions. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:15, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

My point is that converting bird names to lower case has community support. Good editors who have left might have stayed if editors who disagreed with them had communicated more gently with them. Style and content are both important. If SMcCandlish has converted bird names to lower case in conformity with the aforementioned decision, how does that diminish the contributions of other editors?

—Wavelength (talk) 17:37, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

I quite frankly do not care whether the majority of the US believes in Creationism, it does not make it the right thing. Or same-sex marriage. The crux of civil society is that you not rule by mob, but by argument. WP has become the perfect example of the lowest common denominator because of that. 74.248.47.131 (talk) 14:52, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Community support is sometimes mob rule. The contributions of experts who actually know about the topic should not be discouraged by the capitalization trolls who make a moral issue out of something that isn't, particularly when, in the real world, there are reasonably compelling arguments for both sentence case and title case capitalization of animal names. Consistency is usually a good thing, but as they say, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Montanabw^(talk) 18:21, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Editors presented their arguments for and against the use of lower case in bird names, and the editor who closed the discussion presented a detailed list of considerations and how they were weighed in the final decision. There is no indication that that editor was influenced by antisocial factors.

Ideally, members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Manual of Style have expertise in matters of writing style, members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds have expertise in ornithology, and members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes have expertise in ichthyology. At User talk:Wavelength/Archive 3#Sparsely-spotted stingaree (September 2010), I posted this comment: "If the leading authorities on the study of sharks and rays, because of their expertise in that field, have found what they consider to be a valid reason for using the hyphen in this expression, then I might be persuaded to accept that reason as a basis for agreeing with their decision about hyphenation. Otherwise, or until I know of such a reason, I believe that they have simply made an error in the use of the English language, and that someone with expertise in the study of the English language (possibly a copy editor or a linguist) should kindly tell them of their error."

(If "blue heron" and its capitalized version are both ambiguous in their own ways, then ornithologists can make a decision to use "blue-heron" or "blueheron".)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said, in his essay "Self-Reliance": "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." (q:Ralph Waldo Emerson#Self-Reliance) However, 1 Corinthians 14:33 (New International Version) says: "For God is not a God of disorder but of peace--as in all the congregations of the Lord's people."

—Wavelength (talk) 19:36, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Just a reminder, that it appeared from the presentation of material in the discussion that not all experts used upper case. If they all had, I might have had to discuss it somewhat differently, because the general question of which to prefer is not a simple matter. This is not a conflict of expert use vs. non-expert use, but of divided use, both by experts and non-experts. The essence of my argument for the close that divided use could not form the basis for an exception to a general rule. DGG ( talk ) 04:37, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

@ DGG I'm not criticising you for your conduct of the closure, or the many GF editors who participated in the discussion (and the odd sockpuppet). The bitterness comes from the behaviour of the Mos warriors, particularly McC. Birds were targetted because we had a consistent policy that he didn't like (three consecutive common butterflies in one of my FAs had their articles capped, lc and binomial, but apparently that's not an MoS issue). McC doesn't actually move the pages to lc himself, he leaves that to his minions and moves on to his next target, always one with a consistent policy like horses and sheep breeds. The reason he's at ANI is that he didn't even bother with discussion with those articles, just imposed the MoS policies that he creates without discussion. His standard response when challenged is that my policies are right, I'll implement them how I choose, if you don't like it, fuck off. Which is exactly what contributors are doing. Even I have taken 2000 bird article off my watchlist because it seems pointless bothering about content Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:58, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

I hope this doesn't upset people further, but as a botanist I would point out that this problem arises in part because of the efforts within ornithology to standardize common names, and the consequent use of those names for the titles of Wikipedia pages. If ornithologists communicated more in Latin, as other biologists do, the names could be properly typeset, and there would be no confusion between Sturnus vulgaris and whatever species is locally a "common starling". I expect that using Latin more would also bring respect for historical changes of common names, so that people wouldn't revert mention of the older names used by venerable works like Audubon's Birds of America (e.g., Rough-legged Falcon rather than the modern Rough-legged Buzzard). Fortunately for botany, the common names are almost invariably so ludicrously ambiguous that arguments can rapidly be made for using the scientific name for Wikipedia page titles. I would suggest that wikipedians interested in birds might do better to work to change the page names to Latin and use the Latin throughout the page except where common names are briefly listed. I'm a keen birder, but I won't edit anything to do with ornithology unless unambiguous naming practices become accepted there. (And yes, downcasing is ridiculous.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:15, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Sigh - yes I would have preferred it if they'd all been at species names from the get-go but there you go......for a real headache look at invertebrate pages....sigh. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:31, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

I am criticizing DDG for the way it was closed, as he solidified the mob rule in this case. As long as the mob rules, this project will go down the gutters. And more and more expert editors will leave. 74.248.47.131 (talk) 14:48, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Bird identification

Comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science#Can anyone identify this bird? (version of 00:44, 22 July 2014). Also, editors may wish to watchlist Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science for future questions.
—Wavelength (talk) 00:54, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

It's a Dunnock. Said as much on the reference page. MeegsC (talk) 01:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you.—Wavelength (talk) 01:32, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Has this image been uploaded to Commons? If so, where? Snowman (talk) 10:38, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

@Snowmanradio:, the user (Coat of Many Colours) is a regular on the reference page, and has said he plans to upload it. He wanted it IDed before he did so. Don't know if he already has, but you could certainly ask him directly. MeegsC (talk) 12:32, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I was hoping that User:Wavelength is watching this discussion. Snowman (talk) 22:12, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this talk page is on my watchlist.—Wavelength (talk) 22:42, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

The original discussion has been archived at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 July 22#Can anyone identify this bird?, and I do not know whether the image has been uploaded to Commons.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:22, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

I see, it was User:Coat of Many Colours who took the picture. I am hoping that he is watching this discussion. Snowman (talk) 09:38, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Caiques and play-fighting

I was just wondering if anyone had a source that mentioned *adult* Caiques regularly wrestling and play-fighting with each other, apparently just for fun. As far as I'm aware this is something that is unique to Caiques, and I wanted to mention that in the article - but I've been unable to find anything in writing to confirm this... Thanks. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 21:23, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Is it really play-fighting? Are you referring to birds in captivity or birds in the wild? As far as I am aware, caiques fight other parrot species as well, at least in captivity. They can be aggressive and I am not convinced that the term "play-fighting" is adequate here, although I can not say that they do not "play-fight" between themselves at times as juveniles. As far as I am aware, a lot of parrot species are very territorial, at least in the breeding season, and will readily go into fierce battle to defend their nests. I think that some parrots have calls of submission, when they want a fight to stop and indicate that they have lost. Perhaps, some of the fighting is about the serious business of establishing dominance or pecking order, but I am only guessing. Snowman (talk) 21:59, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

If you look up 'Caique wrestling' on Youtube, there are loads of examples (e.g. this) of adult Caiques wrestling. Just rolling around on the ground and grappling in a very 'unbirdlike' manner. I'm not sure of the purpose of it, but there doesn't seem to be any real aggression there. It appears to be play to me. I have never seen any other adult birds behaving like this - and certainly no parrots. Birds usually hate anything that messes up their plumage, but in this case they seem to enjoy scuffling. I suppose that it could be a function of captivity, but I wouldn't know about that... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:45, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Interesting video. I agree this does not appear to be aggression - both birds have plenty of opportunity to escape but do not, and there is no wing-flapping which would be expected if this was aggression. Play, especially in adult animals, is often thought of as a "luxury" behaviour, i.e. it is only performed when an animal has the time available to do this. Captive animals do not have to hunt, find water, remain vigilant, etc so they tend to have more time available for luxury behaviours. Play is often a way of non-aggressively determining dominance. Dogs, for example, will often perform a "play-bow" (this is a metacommunication which effectively says "anything I do from now on is play") and then perform tug-of-war with a rope. The dogs are assessing each others strength but in a non-aggressive way. I have seen similar wrestling behaviour before between Keas in a zoo. Interestingly, Keas are also parrots. When I saw this, the activity seemed to be focussed on a stick, rather like the toy in video. Perhaps this behaviour is related to "ownership" of a resource?__DrChrissy (talk) 09:55, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

The narrator in the video that User Kurt Shaped Box linked says that the two Caiques are about 18 months old. These are not of breeding age, as far as I am aware. I would guess that they become of breeding age at about 4 to 6 years old. These are juvenile or sub-adult Caigues play fighting. Another YouTube video is titled "Baby Caique Playtime". Hence, the YouTube vidoes that I have seen are not proof that adult caiques playfight. The playfighting between these young birds could be to improve there co-ordination and fighting in a safe environment. I would guess that adult parrots do not waist time with pointless playfighting. Snowman (talk) 11:05, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Most adult animals do show activities that might be described as play, although it is at a much reduced frequency and duration compared with juveniles. The point made above about potential damage to the birds' feathers also applies to bones. Bird's bones are extremely weak if they are exposed to forces in a direction different to that for which they have evolved. I thought it was rather curious the way the birds in the video kept their wings folded, until I thought of the potential for injury. By the way, I forgot to mention the Kea is a burrowing parrot - perhaps it too has evolved a skeletal structure which allows this play-fighting.__DrChrissy (talk) 12:32, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

For some reason, I thought that breeding age in Caiques was about 18 months or so. According to this, it's actually 2-3 years, so yeah - the birds in the video are subadults. In this vid however, one of the Caiques is a youngster, but one is 3 1/2 years old. Just as a matter of interest, have either of you ever seen Caiques 'surfing'? It's one of their characteristic behaviours. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:53, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

The website birdchannel says that they breed at age 5 years. Snowman (talk) 21:34, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

It actually says "Although caiques are physically capable of breeding at about 2 years of age, many should not or will not until they are about 5 years old". Caiquesite.com says "Caiques usually reach sexual maturity between two and three years of age". Honestly, considering that they're small birds, I thought that it would be a lot younger than that. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:59, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Parrots are generally long-lived birds, and they have to compete for nest sites, so a delayed age of maturity might theoretically be beneficial to them to be able to have time to prepare for territorial battles with their elders as well as other cavity-nesting bird species. I would guess that strong and experienced birds are the ones that can takeover a territory and then successfully defend a nest and a territory. The Spix's Macaws that are currently in captivity do not breed until they are about 10 years old, as far as I understand. I think that what is lacking with the hypothesis that adult caiques play-fight is reliable evidence of their age of maturity and reliable evidence of adult caiques play-fighting. I am also not clear with is meant by maturity in some websites. Does maturity mean that they have the appearance of adults or does it mean that they are mature both physically and behaviorally. Snowman (talk) 19:45, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

In light of the discussion here and the lack of available sources, I think that it's probably best not to mention the play-fighting in the article. Thanks for your input, fellas. Caiques do seem to be very robust and physically strong birds (for their size) - I have heard it mentioned before (by pet owners) that their legs are large, thick and very muscular, again for their size. I'm not sure how well this species has been studied in the wild and what its habits normally are, but I do know that in captivity they are considered very good climbers and walkers - but quite weak fliers. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:32, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

The leg ring size for a caique is one size bigger than for Senegal Parrot. Senegal Parrots are generally a bit smaller than Caique. I am struggling to judge the proportions exactly, but I would guess that the legs of a Caique are comparative to those of other parrots considering the overall dimensions of the birds. I am not sure what is meant by caiques are "weak fliers". Of course, they are not made for a "life in the air" like gulls and turns. Also, I am not sure what is meant by they are "good climbers and walkers". However, I have heard that caiques like water and bathe regularly and that they like to eat a lot of fruit. Snowman (talk) 09:34, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure this should be dropped from the article completely. If there are several examples of this on You-Tube and pehaps mentions on web-pages, could there not be a statement in the article (with an example You-Tube video) such as "These birds sometimes peform a behaviour unusual for avian species in which they roll over on their backs in apparent play - sometimes called "wrestling" " . This avoids any mention of age, captivity and attribution of any motivation. I think animal behaviour is one of those subject-areas where the WP policy of not allowing YouTube as evidence, needs to be relaxed. So long as the video has not been doctored, then the behaviour has occurred. It is the text associated with the video that causes the problems of robustness, not the video itself.__DrChrissy (talk) 09:45, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

(outdent!)Okay, Chrissy - I used your wording and added a line or two to the Caique article. Just a simple mention that the behaviour occurs and that videos showing the behaviour have been placed online. I didn't actually realize until now just what a poor state this article is in. Over half of it consists of unreferenced avicultural anecdotes. I don't see anything terribly 'wrong' as such (AFAIK) with the info, but it does need a lot of work... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 20:44, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Just read the article (for the first time). Your wording looks fine, but I agree with you about the general poor quality of the article. It is in desperate need of more references!__DrChrissy (talk) 11:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Tool using/intelligent gulls

Do you think that these two videos are worth mentioning in the gull article? Not really sure myself, because although the vids are interesting and show two very rare facets of gull behaviour, YouTube links are generally avoided. Exceptional enough content, maybe? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:20, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

The use of bait by gulls is pretty well documented. Here's a book link for a ref. MeegsC (talk) 01:13, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

It's probably also enough to find some references about social learning (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3gx591nz#page-1) and perhaps something about the (relatively) high intelligence level of the larids. I can see if I can find others if you need them. I'm guessing the YouTube links would be removed. MeegsC (talk) 01:31, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Please see my comments above in "Caiques and play-fighting" regarding the use of You-Tube videos. I realise they are discouraged according to WP Policy. However, if there are multiple independent examples, and these are not of trained animals (difficult to determine, I know), then WP articles on animal behaviour can be greatly enhanced in their interest and educational value by using them. I repeat, it is the text associated with the video that is usually the problem, not the video. Adhering to a scientific approach to the caption/description should also not be a problem with appropriate editing.__DrChrissy (talk) 12:15, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I was aware that bait fishing behaviour has been previously documented in gulls (and I gather that it's a rare behaviour). I believe that it's actually mentioned in some of the gull articles already. This is the first time I've ever seen in on video though. I really couldn't say whether the gull in the other video has been trained to open a tap or not. Another thing that YouTube has taught me is that there are a LOT of people who take in orphaned/lost gull chicks every year - and as a result I'll bet that there are more semi-tame, humanized, free-flying gulls ('tame hacked', I think the falconry term is) around the place than we realize. As intelligent and adaptable birds, I suppose that they can be trained quite readily, given the time, effort and a suitable opportunity. MeegsC's link about observational learning may also be very relevant in this case. I wonder if they copy human behaviour too? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 19:52, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

I have finally got onto a PC that can process the videos. They are both really interesting. The gull that turns the water on could have learnt this by trial-and-error, but more likely learnt it with steps in observational learning such as local enhancement and stimulus enhancement. I'm not so sure these sorts of observations can tell us much about "intelligence" (whatever that means). There are several studies where insects have trained themselves to move switches to avoid electric shock, or to gain a resource such as food or water. Regarding the "fishing" video. There is one important aspect missing in the video - did the gull place the bait there? If not, this behaviour can simply be attributed to the gull learning that the fish congregate around the bread and that staying near the bread increases the probability of catching a fish. By the way, these fish look extremely large for the gull to be trying to catch.__DrChrissy (talk) 13:51, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

On the subject of using You-Tube videos, I was relatively recently editing Tool use by animals and I included the following. "Common ravens (Corvus corax) are one of only a few species who make their own toys. They have been observed breaking off twigs to play with socially. At least one corvid has been filmed repeatedly sliding down a snowy roof while balancing on a coffee lid and another playing with a table tennis ball in partnership with a dog.- potentially both rare examples of tool use for the purposes of play."

Regardless of whether he placed it there, I think that it's quite significant that the gull didn't just eat the bread. No, he floated there and waited - because he'd rather have a fish. Gulls can actually swallow very large food items (the 'never swallow anything larger than your own head' rule doesn't apply to them!) - if you've ever seen a snake eating an egg, you'll get a general idea of what it looks like.

Yeah, I saw those crow videos before - crows are great, aren't they? :) There is actually another piece of interesting corvid behaviour that I've seen in connection to gulls. It's usually been magpies when I've seen it, but crows do it too. They'll sneak up on resting gulls and pull their tails. Or bite them on the backside. They do it repeatedly until the gull gets enraged. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 10:13, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it is significant that the Gull has learned to resist an immediate reward for a greater reward in the future. This is usually taken as an indication of higher cognitive function. Whether this is tool use is debatable and very much dependent on which definition is used. I was heavily involved in editing the article Tool use in animals and I was absolutely staggered at the number and variety of definitions. It seems some people were defining tool use to suit their own arguements, for example, many people seem reluctant to include nest building by birds.

Regarding the pecking of the tail. This sounds remarkably like a huge behavioural behavioural problem in commercial hens - Feather pecking. This often begins by pulling at tail feathers or pecking at the Uropygial gland. If you know of any videos of this, i would be interested to see them.__DrChrissy (talk) 10:40, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I have certainly seen videos of this behaviour on YouTube before, but now that I go looking for them, I can't find anything. Take a look at a video of the same behaviour with a cat though. Imagine this, but the magpie snapping at the tail/wingfeathers of a Great Black-backed Gull, or outright pecking its ass. I suppose that it's for the purpose of annoying it enough to make it go somewhere else. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 15:19, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

You might be interested in Vampire finch...the pecking at the gulls might not be just to piss off the bird, but might be for food.__DrChrissy (talk) 16:00, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I've seen people on the internet suggest that the crows might be trying to gather nesting material too, plucking feathers or fur. But that would seem to be a fairly risky way of going about it. We all know what a cat can do to a bird, but something like a GBB gull is VERY dangerous too. If you've ever seen a terrier-type dog with a rat, you'll get an idea of what large gulls are capable of when they get ahold of smaller animals. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 17:46, 10 August 2014 (UTC)