Talk:Bird/Archive 1

Initial miscellanea
Um... It seems that something of the form "birds have wings" would be a good idea.

Yeah, Ostrich, it seemed that way to me, too. Which is why when I made Bird re-direct to Aves, I copied all the text from Bird. However, for some strange reason, the text wasn't showing up. But the text showed up in the diff on the History. And really weird was when I went to edit the page to the text back in, it was already there! Don't know what was going on, it shows up now. With luck it will stay there.

I just checked on Bug reports, and this looks just like what they're talking about page caching. Aidan Elliott-McCrea, Friday, May 10, 2002

No mention of birds as pets under Birds & Humans? -- wm

Is the listing of orders in a particular sequence? If so, what is it? It doesn't look familiar. Tannin


 * The following orders are still out of sequence. For now, I've stuck them all in immediately above the passerines. Could some kind soul from the Northern Hemisphere slot them in correctly please?
 * Order Piciformes (woodpecker and toucan)
 * Order Trogoniformes (trogon)
 * Order Coliiformes (mousebird)
 * Order Gaviiformes (loons or divers)
 * Tannin 14:23 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

The passenger pigeon was popular on the menus? Kingturtle 00:11 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC) Why is the oxpecker/water buffalo relationship explained under Birds & Humans? Kingturtle 00:13 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

Splitting Article?
I have been thinking (yes, I know, it's a dangerous occupation, but I can't seem to give it up) that there is a case for splitting the idea of a formal, technical "main bird page" on the one hand, and the more informal, introductory main bird page on the other. What I have in the back of my mind is that this present page bird should be much as it is now, but fine-tuned to be an introduction rather than a comprehensive entry, to be a "start here" page, if you like, and that the arcane details (in particular, the horrors of taxonomy) be consigned to a different page. If so, then the obvious way to do it would be to heep this page pretty much as-is, and put the more formal page at Aves (which is currently just a redirect to here). The taxoboxes would usually link to Aves, and the body text to bird. It would need some heavy-duty link fixing, but nothing that couldn't be done in a couple of hours.

No hurry about this, just an idea that has been flapping around in the back of my head. Worth pondering? Tannin 09:20 May 3, 2003 (UTC)


 * I don't think that is a good idea. Aves and birds are exactly the same thing - it is far better to spin off the detail in traditional daughter articles such as Bird evolution, Bird anatomy and physiology etc. But yes, this article should be introductory in nature. --mav


 * I need to think a bit more about this-as you say, there is no rush. jimfbleak

Why the double list of birds
Josh asked Why the double list of birds?

Because that's the way that nearly all the articles are arranged, Josh. There simply isn't room in the taxoboxes for common names - not unless we want to wind up with huge taxoboxes that don't leave a lot of room for actual text and pictures. In any case, all too often the common names for groups of creatures don't line up with the orders and families: there are many common names that refer to a little bit of this family and a little bit of some other one. Sometimes they even cross over into different orders!

Originally, I was in favour of including more information in the taxoboxes, and spent quite some time working up a fancy table layout that would accommodate this. Other people working on the birds disagreed with me, however, and so I gave way on the point. As time has gone by, I've become convinced that I was wrong, and that the standard "lean 'n mean" taxoboxes are much the best. In the end, there is often far too much information that ought to go on a list to fit it into a taxobox - information heading in "both directions" if I can put it that way:


 * We often want to "zoom in" on extra detail and a more comprehensive listing of common names and alternative names or add other details (such as mentioning that this species is extinct, for example), and this can't be done in a taxobox.
 * We also need to "zoom out" and place a given taxon within a context of other relevant taxa - knowledge on its own is useless stuff, it's only when you can place that datum in a context that it becomes meaningful.

Quite a bit of the discussion that led to this arrangement took place on WikiProject Birds and its talk page. Run your eye over that and see what you think. Tannin 04:30 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think I don't understand why we have the taxoboxes, then. Recall on Talk:Chordate you said that their top half was usually irrelevant, so obviously what value the taxoboxes have derives largely from their bottom half. But here, we find that the bottom half is necessarily redundant, because the same information needs to be copied out in the article proper. If both halves are unnecessary, what purpose does the whole serve? Possibly they're convenient navigational tools - I definitely appreciated them when working on the ciliates - but that was without lists in the articles themselves. I'm not sure I can say those wouldn't work just as well. -- Josh

Mythology
Something on birds in mythology and symbolism would be good! Is there anything already on the wikipedia in that area? --Sam 10:39 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Questions
Tiny, but informative, addable facts to "preening"-sentence: --Menchi 22:05 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * 1) Do most birds ever preen each others? Like...chimps who eat each other's lice? :-) I have never seen a crow do that, but I haven never a chimp either in meatspace.
 * 2) Do birds sometimes use water (from a pool or river), or even saliva, like cats?