Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds

WikiProject Birds

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Category:Birds of (African countries)

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

2024 taxonomy update

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

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

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

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

It is the fallacy of false equivalence that British English is the original English and American English the derivative. The false equivalence is between where the language originated and where the ancestral traits of the language are currently used. Indeed, the most obvious difference (rhoticisation) is the opposite.

Given the origins of the two spellings of "grey", it doesn't make much sense to call one of them the original.

græi -> grai -> gray

græi -> grei -> grey

The Black-necked grebe article explains that the name "eared grebe" is older than "black-necked grebe". Grey Clownfish (talk) 09:31, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

@Grey Clownfish - it's nothing to do with that! It's that they have eliminated English as a permissible spelling, treating it as an error that cannot be tolerated or permitted to exist. When I said 'original English' I was referring to the text they took over from Lynx HBW, which was in English, not American. What I foresee this leading to is a requirement for American to be used in all future ornithological literature, to comply with their manual of style; this would include e.g. a requirement that the BOU change to American spellings for the official British bird list, and also (more significant here) demands that all wikipedia's bird pages be titled at American spellings to comply with Cornell's official list, and using American spellings in the text, even for species that have nothing to do with the USA and everything to do with countries that don't use American spellings.

As to the grebe, yes, "eared" is older than "black-necked", but "eared" (Latin, auritus) leads to obvious confusion options with Podiceps auritus. Given that these two species were often confused in the past, it is quite plausible that a lot of early usage of 'eared' referred to P. auritus rather than P. nigricollis. - MPF (talk) 14:57, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

American English is a dialect of English, there is no linguistic basis for treating it as a separate language.

By the way, the UK is not the same thing as England. So if American English is not English because it's not English English, then the same is true of Scottish English, Welsh English and Northern Irish English.

Maybe you could argue that American English is different enough from English English to be not English, but this is not the case with the other British English dialects. But that argument falls apart when you consider that the dialect that is the most different from Received Pronunciation is likely to be spoken in the UK or one of its territories. If Scots is a dialect of English, it's the one. But it's probably a separate language. So it may be Trista de Cunha English or one of the English English dialects.

If you're searching in a book though, you pretty much have to use the spellings/names that the book uses. It's fine for them to use their spellings/names. I mean, what would you think if some American complained about foreigners using British spellings?

By the way, searching for birds on eBird lets you use other names. You can even search for species by programmatically-generated 4-letter codes which have many homonyms and yes, will have synonyms too, based on alternative English names and scientific names. So BNGR is recognised as a code for Eared Grebe.

In any case, it is absurd to claim that eBird is useless just for using different names. Did you know that Wikipedia can use references in another language? And you think another dialect is such a big deal? While we follow IOC, Wikipedia doesn't even have anything saying that British English must be used for bird articles. Please see MOS:ENGVAR. Grey Clownfish (talk) 03:25, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

@Grey Clownfish "By the way, searching for birds on eBird lets you use other names" – it does not. As pointed out near the start of this section, entering 'Grey Heron' in the search box yields 'No matches' (I could upload a printscreen to demonstrate, except it would breach copyright rules); it does not exist as a legitimate option on the Cornell website. You are required to submit to American imperialism to access any data.

"I mean, what would you think if some American complained about foreigners using British spellings?" – I'd support them, when it is relevant. See e.g. my notes at Talk:Forster's tern or Talk:Redhead (bird) and my related edits on those pages.

"So if American English is not English because it's not English English, then the same is true of Scottish English, Welsh English and Northern Irish English" – American is the only one with an extensive range of different spellings. Every other dialect uses 'grey', 'colour', etc. So other dialects are scarcely distinguishable in typed text, even when they are readily audible when spoken. - MPF (talk) 10:36, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I also think they should follow the IOC or at least offer different variants, but complaining about this here is pointless as there is nothing we can do about it here in WP. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 10:58, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

That is so weird. So alternative English names don't work, but 4-letter codes based on them do? It's probably a bug. I very much doubt they would have done that on purpose. More evidence that it's a bug, searching for Pica pica doesn't get Pica pica! Yet Passer domesticus works. Grey Clownfish (talk) 11:07, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

"True thrush"

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

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

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

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

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

Support for reasons elucidated above. MeegsC (talk) 12:37, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Support, although I would quite like there to be a Siberian False Thrush, couldn't be harder to see than the real one Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:11, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

@Aa77zz, @Jts1882, @MeegsC, @Jimfbleak – thanks all! Looks like consensus with no dissenting voice after a week. Could someone do the move please? And also found a related case, can True owl be moved to Strigidae (for all the same reasons), or does that need its own separate discussion? - MPF (talk) 10:31, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Moved both Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:12, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak – many thanks! - MPF (talk) 14:10, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Thoughts on true parrots, for the same reasons as above? Iloveparrots (talk) 12:14, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

@Iloveparrots – trickier, as they are neither a family nor a genus as circumscribed on that page; perhaps "typical parrots" might be better? In theory, just parrot should be enough (as none of the Psittaciformes excluded from that page are called 'parrot'), but I can see this conflicts badly with the common interpretation of 'parrot' ≡ 'Psittaciformes'. MPF (talk) 14:10, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd prefer typical parrots to Psittacoidea, agree that just parrot won't run Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:34, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Preferred source for synonyms?

What is the preferred source (if any) of this project for synonyms? Specifically in the context of listing synonyms in taxoboxes, as I've found that many bird articles have incomplete and/or unreferenced synonyms lists in their taxoboxes that I'd like to fix. I know we generally follow the IOC World Bird List for taxonomy, but they don't list synonyms for each species, only its placement and accepted common/binomial name. Sorry if this is a silly question, I just couldn't find any particular guidance regarding synonyms on the Taxonomy & resources page. Cheers, Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 03:53, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

For bird synonyms there is AviBase although the data is a bit hard to access/download. The HBW/BirdLife (v9.0) downloadable spreadsheet has a "Synonyms" column, with values for 22% of species (and HBW and IOC have 93% identical species). Two somewhat dated sources are Peters's Check-List of Birds of the world and Hellmayr's Catalogue of Birds of the Americas and the adjacent Islands. Both are in the BHL. I suppose most names are in GBIF, too, but I'm not sure how reliable GBIF is; that probably varies with the quality of its constituent databases (IOC too is slurped into GBIF but GBIF contained an obsolete version of IOC last time I looked) - Kweetal nl (talk) 04:46, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Merge plovers?

We have a page Charadriidae for the family which includes the plovers, dotterels, and lapwings. These three are lumped under the name plover; we have a page plover for that, too. This of course covers more or less the same material as the Charadriidae page. Should the two be merged? My suggestion is for yes, at the Charadriidae page, and make 'plover' a redirect to that. This is a follow up to recent requests at talk:plover. TSventon (talk) 12:48, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Plovers covers subfamily Charadriinae (according to the taxobox) or the whole family (according to the lede), while the Charadriidae article claims to cover the plovers, lapwings (subfamily Vanellinae according to its article) and dotterels (which seem a mixed bunch, some in subfamily Charadriinae). It's unclear what source is being used for the subfamilies or if these common name divisions match the taxonomy as neatly. The IOC refers to the whole family as plovers, but H&M4 says the family includes plovers and lapwings and also recognises a third subfamily, Pluvialinae for Pluvialis. The article for latter places the genus in Charadriinae. I think these articles may need some work before and decision on merging can be made.  —  Jts1882 | talk  14:41, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

I posted this as a response to a helpdesk question and my knowledge is limited to what I have read in the articles. Improving the articles would be a good first step. TSventon (talk) 15:02, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Years in birding and ornithology

The most recent article we have is 2021 in birding and ornithology (and that is tagged for notability); we have nothing for 2022, 2023 or 2024. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:13, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

2021 songbird illness

I just created a stub for the 2021 songbird illness. It may be of interest to members of this project. Thriley (talk) 15:56, 20 December 2024 (UTC)