Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds/Archive 9

Anyone want to collaborate on Origin of birds?
User:John.Conway has suggested that WP:DINO editors not neglect concept articles like origin of birds for FA-factory genus articles. While I don't plan to stop writing genus articles, I do see his point and I've been thinking about redoing this article for awhile. As the article obviously falls under the purview of both of our Projects, I thought I'd put the word out here too. Anyone who can help spiff this article up would be tremendously appreciated! Sheep81 09:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to help, but I need at least 2-3 weeks lead in to acquaint myself with the lit. I have some books, but I need to read them first before I can contribute in a meaningful sense. Same with any big project. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  10:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd love to help, but I warn you I'm not much use in this area - so I'll add bits and pieces, maybe help copyedit, and the like, but I very little about the origin of birds. Cheers, Corvus   coronoides  21:15, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I added a bit on the "Trees-down" or "ground-up"? debate from a copy of The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds that I found in a bookshelf in my house. It's from 1980, so hopefully the information in it isn't outdated. (Hmm, expiration dates on books? Just like tomato sauce!) --Jude 23:26, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Kakapo taxonomy
Hello there. I originally posted this question on the talk page of Kakapo, but it seems to be a bit quiet around there. My question concerns the taxonomy of the Kakapo. Currently, in the article, it is said to be in the family Psittacidae, and the subfamily Psittacinae. I'm currently reading through "A parrot apart: the natural history of the kakapo (Strigops habroptilus), and the context of its conservation management", and its chapter on taxonomy states that it is in the subfamily Strigopinae. Verbatim, "[...] but Smith (1975) used anatomical, morphological and ethological characters to place it in the endemic New Zealand subfamily Strigopinae, which has usually been followed since (Turbott 1990)." It then goes to explain the similarities between the Kea and the Kaka, and does not actually state the Psittacinae subfamily. I'm wondering about this: the resource I linked to is very reputable and informative, but there seems to be a bit of a conflict with the article. It seems that, at the very least, a bit more explanation on the taxonomic groups this bird belongs to would be well-placed (the article is featured, after all). Or maybe I'm just not reading this right, since birds are not my field of expertise (but I find them very interesting). —msikma (user, talk) 19:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

First line: think big!
Having read most of this exchange above, I am increasingly convinced that all species level articles should follow their Latin names, with redirects for common names. I find DJLayton4's argument for plant articles convincing, and I believe we should keep the MOS as simple as possible. Going with Latin names is the only way to achieve this. Parentheses are ugly, cause layout and rendering difficulties, and break up prose visually. I think we should abandon them entirely for Latin names, not just the first line. However, my strongest belief is that we should not create yet another exception for the first line, so what I am "voting" for here is consistency between the first line and every other instance of a binomial, and I believe this is most achievable with the comma. I hold this opinion in spite of parentheses being standard in abstracts of peer-reviewed publications. I think Wikipedia can do better, and we may just wish to drop the apologetic parentheses entirely. Latin names are nothing to be ashamed of. Spamsara 11:41, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I have to disagree with Spamsara -- I think changing all references to the scientific name is a HORRIBLE idea. And that's despite the fact that I'm a scientist.  Most people who use Wikipedia as a reference are probably not going to be scientists.  They may not know much about scientific names.  (If you want an example of that, just have a look at the picture files in Wikimedia Commons, where scientific names are SUPPOSED to be used, and see what a mess it is.)  If they're going to type in something like Robin and get something that NEVER refers to Robin but only to Erithacus rubecula or Turdus migratorius, they're going to quickly give up.  This is an encyclopedia, not a scientific journal!!  As for the comment that parentheses are "apologetic", that seems a bit silly.  It's just a way of separating out information that may or may not be of particular use to the reader.  For those who are interested in and knowledgable about scientific names, it gives more information.  For those who haven't a clue -- and have no interest in learning more about them -- that's ok too.  Why FORCE people to deal with scientific names just because some think parenthese are "ugly"!  As a for-instance, I'm NOT a botanist.  However, I am interested in learning more about plants -- and I find the botany section of Wikipedia very difficult to use.  I can seldom find the articles I'm really looking for, because I don't know enough about the taxonomy of plants to know even which genera of plants I should be looking in!  Just an alternative viewpoint...  MeegsC | Talk 13:39, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Not what I'm saying at all. Please read it again, and carefully. Thanks. Spamsara 22:49, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah! I thought your comment "I think we should abandon them entirely for Latin names, not just the first line." referred to the COMMON NAME, not the parentheses!  Sorry about that... :)  However, I DO think it's okay to start the article with the common name(s), followed by the scientific names.  MeegsC | Talk 22:57, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Of course all the above assumes that there is a single agreed scientific name for all species - definitely not the case for birds. Jimfbleak 06:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Nest
I'm about to start a massive expansion of the woefully inadequate Nest article. Any comments on whether we should have a separate article on BIRD nests or whether we should incorporate all animal nests (including birds, great apes, wasps, turtles, alligators, snakes, dinosaurs, etc.) into the same article? MeegsC | Talk 22:49, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * As it is, the article can probably act as a general article with subsection etting into separate article for Insect nest (? The difference between beehive, wasp nest and ant colony is more semantic than anything...), Bird nest, Reptile nest, mammal nest. Either that or a full-scale disambiguation page. Note also that Aerie will have to be merged. Circeus 23:46, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't like the idea of a disamb, otherwise you end up with the lunacy of egg, where a simple word is disambed beyond all logic - is my chicken egg egg (biology) or egg (food)? Jimfbleak 06:03, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Eggs
How bout we start trying to get pictures of the species eggs on bird articles? 84.9.35.112 03:21, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * :) Getting pictures of the birds is hard enough ! Shyamal 04:38, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Argentavis magnificens

 * news story about Argentavis magnificens which for some reason hasn't been added to this proj. See Talk: Argentavis. Ling.Nut 23:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Need to identify soundfile
- I need to identify which of the four goldfinch articles this belongs to. Original clip came form here. Borisblue 05:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it's a goldfinch of any sort. To me, this sounds suspiciously like a Prothonotary Warbler. MeegsC | Talk 18:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Really? I'd figured that the FWS would be a reliable source. Borisblue 08:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * They are okay, but not flawless. Depends if it was classified by a field guy or someone in an office in Washington (former FWS volunteer speaking). Sabine's Sunbird  talk  10:13, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I would certainly hope the FWS would label things correctly. However having listened to the original source (which is a bit longer than the downloaded one), I'm not convinced about this particular cut.  I also find it hard to believe that the USFWS post recordings with absolutely no indication of where or when they were recorded.  That can be important information! MeegsC | Talk 10:16, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Here are a couple of other sound files for comparison. Note that the first one (a Florida recording) has a funny bit at the end; this must be a regional thing, as I've never heard that before...
 * 

"Japanese turkey"?
Somebody has added a "Japanese Turkey, Meleagris japonicus" to Late Quaternary prehistoric birds. Google is unable to find a source, no ref I have ever come across mentions such a taxon, and altogether I find the idea of turkeys in Japan biogeographically as absurd as post-Paleogene hummingbirds in Europe. Apparently some lapsus or misunderstanding, but what is it based upon? People don't just so invent taxa that are taxonomically possible but not systematically... usually, they'd make mistakes like capitalizing the species name or ending everyting with "-us"... the user in question has spent an inordinate amount of time to create redlinks (which I will prune away as is probably SOP for such lists. At least the sp indet's. We have these taxa as redlinks on the genus pages, so the list should not be a sea of red but only linked when the pages become available) Dysmorodrepanis 04:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds hoaxy to me, I'd remove it pending a source. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  05:06, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Patent nonsense. I've removed it. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:23, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

New Penguins
Hi folks, I have started to discuss the new penguin paper from PNAS at Talk:Penguin. It's a motherlode of information, but some cannot be taken at face value. Get it, read it, fire away! It needs discussion, because it has far-ranging implications, being the first study of fossil penguins in 60 years(!) that gives sufficient resolution to actually translate it into taxonomy. Dysmorodrepanis 16:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Lagopus leucurus vs. L.leucura
I have been slowly going through the articles created by Polbot operated by Quadell (basically, it crawls through IUCN redlist, and creates stubs where the articles do not exist), and came across this. There is now a Polbot-created article for White-Tailed Ptarmigan (Lagopus leucura) and a much longer article for White-tailed Ptarmigan (Lagopus leucurus). I would assume there simply was a typo in IUCN Redlist... or is L.leucura used, too? – Sadalmelik 08:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The first should be merged into the second as they are synonymous and the second follows the correct style guideline....in fact I'll do that right now.....cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Polbot is actually doing quite good work - I have gone through almost 100 stubs now, and this is the first real mistake. Of course the bot cannot know whether leucura or leucurus is correct; I suspect it simply checked whether L.leucura was already created and since it was not there, created a stub for the common name and few redirects. Soon there will be stubs for all the species in IUCN Redlist, which I suppose means >99% of the current day birds. Every stub it creates has an infobox and a single reference, which can be used to flesh out the stub. Very handy, I think. – Sadalmelik 12:20, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, no (but it's entirely excusable). leucura is correct: Lagopus is transcribed directly from Ancient Greek and not Latinized. See footnote under Ptarmigan.
 * If in doubt, Zoonomen (see links on project page) usually can resolve the issue. Dysmorodrepanis 15:50, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Mourning Dove on the main page!
Congratulations, all! What a beautiful article! Keep up the great work. Best, Firsfron of Ronchester  11:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

AfD discussion with wider implications
Dear all, there is a debate going on at AfA about Lions in popular culture, which admittedly is a messy article but could have wider implications (eg Ravens in pop culture page for starters) - thus this could set some form of precedent so may be worth debating once and for all there (has it been debated before?). cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * There is a savage debate on-again off-again regarding thew cultural references in Family Guy. I don't think it has been discussed for a bird article yet (but what do I know).
 * Lions are indeed a weak case in point; I don't think their chultural significance has ever changed between cultures and eras. Ravens on the other hand are a more ambiguous lot, and removing the section here arguably would violate WP:BIAS as they are/were considered anything from sacred to an unclean pest by different cultures at different times. Dysmorodrepanis 17:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Anting (bird activity)
Can some ornithologist who sprichts German check the article. ''This behaviour was first described by Erwin Stresemann in German as einemsen in Ornithologische Monatsberichte XLIII. 138 in 1935.'' Is it einemsen or something like einameisen ? Shyamal 07:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * On second look, it is perhaps ok. Added a de interwiki. Shyamal 07:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Einemsen is correct, from the Middle High German (IIRC) term for "ant" whence also "emsig" for "working tirelessly" (cf. for example "Grasshopper and Ant" fable) which is a bit old-fashioned but still widely understood in Standard German today. Dysmorodrepanis 17:29, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, sounds like a nice bit that could go into ant. Shyamal 14:24, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Ring-fence the naming convention to *just* birds
Greetings. Periodically I come across discussions on other taxonomic articles where people (usually non-scientists) want to capitalise the names. For example, there's a discussion over at Lion whether it should be "lion" or "Lion" throughout. As a scientist, I know that capitalisation is never used for the vast majority of animal names, but amateurs seem not to. Birds seem to be an exception because you have large numbers of amateurs observing birds and an agreed set of common names for each species. What is frustrating for me is seeing people use WP:BIRD as justification for capitalising clams and trees and bacteria and whatnot. There are no "official" common names for anything other than birds, and absolutely no tradition of capitalising their common names in the scientific literature. Can we please have a statement added to WP:BIRD somewhere that makes it clear that the naming guidelines put forward here are unique to birds and not general to animals? Having capitalised animal names on Wikipedia looks like amateur hour to me and probably most scientists. I've managed to negotiate a set of scientifically sound rules over at WP:FISH that you're free to reference. Thanks so much! Neale Neale Monks 09:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * On the contrary, Mammal Species of the World (3rd 2005) *is* the official source for common names for mammals, as it follows the work of (I believe) Walker 2000 which first lay out official common names for mammals. - UtherSRG (talk) 10:55, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Uther -- My reading of the Mammal Species of the World page suggests that the common names are merely recommendations for simplicity. Similar projects exist on Fishbase, Cephbase, etc. But such names have no standing in scientific nomenclature. The ICZN has no rules for enforcing common names, since, by definition, they are English-language only and "official" common names would end up duplicating the established Latin (scientific) names. (Also see Common name). Do you have any ICZN rules (or similar) that indicate that the common names in Mammal Species of the World are of the same legal standing as the binomial scientific names? I admit to being an invertebrate taxonomist, and the species I have named are never likely to get common names, but still, I'm operating from my experience of the scientific process where common names are never used nor defined. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 12:02, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

1. As much as I may respect the profession, having known and worked with quite a few scientists in my time, I think the last thing I'd want to depend on the scientific community for would be advice on spelling, grammar, punctuation, or capitalization. 2. The terms 'amateur' and 'scientist' are not mutually exclusive. Next time you feel the need to draw a distinction, try 'layman' instead. It may not suit your sense of superiority quite as well, but it will get your point across much more effectively. &#39;Card 11:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, in Britain, much literature uses the initial capital naming convention for moths, dragonflies, plants. SP-KP 12:36, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * While I agree with the objections to some of the side issues you raised, Neale, I've also complied with your request. We at WP Birds are not setting a standard for all fauna articles.  Any such thing would have to be decided by a wider discussion (which I guess is going on, at least piecemeal).  So I added this sentence, "Also, this convention does not necessarily apply to articles on taxa other than birds," to the project page.  We'll see whether it stays there.


 * By the way, some publications on birds, such as the American magazine Birding, capitalize all species names for consistency. You might see something like, "The White-bellied Go-away-bird was disturbed by a Lion and flew into a Yellow-barked Acacia.  This species often perches in acacias."  I don't know which side this is an argument for.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 14:53, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Hello Jerry. I took a look through some journals. Some, like Journal of Zoology, explicitly forbid capitals of common names completely. Others, like Copeia, insist on them where *recognised* common names exist. The split seems (at my first pass) to be between the US and everyone else, with the US journals favouring capitalised common names. Interestingly, and for no reason I can explain, the leading tropical fish magazine in the US forbids capital letters for common names while the leading magazine in the UK prefers them! So maybe it isn't so simple. Anyway, the bottom line would seem to me to be simple enough: in ornithology, there's a tradition of using capitalised common names and those common names have been agreed among workers in the field. I don't have any issues with this. But this is *absolutely* not the case in most other animal groups, and the edit you made is entirely what I was hoping for: a statement that what goes for birds *does not automatically* go other groups. So thanks! Neale Neale Monks 15:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Bot archival
Wonder if there is support for bot archival for this page. Seems to have become one of the most active WP:TOL talk pages ! Shyamal 14:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. This page needs archiving badly. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  07:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Endemic bird categories and overall category suggestion
I was thinking about starting a few categories for birds that are endemic to specific countries, islands, etc., starting with Category:Endemic birds of South Africa. Does anyone have any comments?

Also, some people may want to consider listifying the "bird by country" categories and merging them into "bird by continent" or "bird by ecoregion" categories. The categories in some articles, such as Ortolan Bunting and Lesser Flamingo, almost look like spam. (Pick out the category for the birds of Egypt in either article.) Dr. Submillimeter 20:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that once we have a valid "List of the birds of country x" (taking into account the comments made in the previous discussion section) that we could eliminate the "Birds of country x" category as being redundant. The list, after all, would give far more information. MeegsC | Talk 21:22, 22 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm in favor of that and Dr. Submillimeter at least has been. Thanks to Yomangani for taking a big step toward it.  The discussion of similar ideas at Category_talk:Biota_by_country and Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_March_8 got a little acrimonious, though.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 16:18, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Some of these already exist, and similar categories exist as regions. I'd recommend you work your new categories into the category hierarchy at Category:Endemism in birds, being mindful of the distinction between an endemic and a restricted-range endemic. SP-KP 22:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

List of birds of Xxxxx (country)
The lists for countries in the Western Palearctic (e.g. List of birds of Spain, List of birds of Morocco, etc., etc.) need a lot of rearranging and spellchecking to bring them into AERC standard order and orthography (see e.g. List of birds of Great Britain, which is correct). Anyone want a big job? - MPF 00:09, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * This is also especially a problem for the auto-generated lists for countries outside N America. AFAIK, the lists prior to the autogeneration are more or less OK, and I've substantially cleaned up Thailand and Kenya since, but the fact remains that most of the lists use US names and spelling (abominations like Gray Heron) use names that suggest the US subspecies (White-winged Scoter, Red Crossbill on European lists) and don't recognise several splits (Common Scoter doesn't appear on the European autolists, but Black Scoter does) Jimfbleak 05:42, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Not to mention grammatical abominations like hyphens before capitals, too ("Golden-Plover"). Rather more seriously, if they are auto-generated by some published software, placing them on wikipedia is very likely a copyright violation against the software producer. Most of these list-generating programmes are for personal use only, not for publishing spin-offs under free licenses. Should they all be deleted, and started over manually? - MPF 09:37, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * they were generated by user:Yomangani, I thought using his own bot. However other lists (including Spain) were done manually by me - they are the ones listed on my user page, and they shouldn't be too bad in terms of nomenclature since I changed the Avibase names - they certainly shouldn't be deleted. I also substantially fixed Thailand and Kenya . The best way to correct the names for countries outside the Americas would presumably be to use a bot, but I have the computing skills of an ant, so I can't do it. Jimfbleak 10:19, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * They aren't copyvios. The lists were generated by a script I wrote which pulled the information from from Avibase, existing lists and articles on Wikipedia (I don't have access to the the script from here, so I can't check which ones, but the featured List of birds of Puerto Rico was the template as I recall) made some immediately obvious corrections, and some corrections to the orders, families, and counts from Fowler's checklist, and calculated the statistics for each group. It isn't a bot as it never does anything on wiki: I cut and pasted the resulting files from my server to the appropriate new article. For the mammal lists I did later, I built in some checking for the existence of articles rather than disambiguation pages, redlinks, and redirects, but I didn't think of that for these, which is why there are odd spellings and punctuation abominations, and why Jimfbleak has had to make so many corrections. They obviously need some work, but since I couldn't see, for example, List of birds of Burkina Faso being created any time soon, I went ahead in filled in the gaps. I don't have any personal attachment to them so if you want to hack them about I won't be complaining.
 * By the way, the British list mentions The following species have been recorded recently, it might help to clarify when recently was. Yomangani talk 22:44, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I've begun to clean Birds of the Seychelles, Madagascar and will be working on Fiji as well. The lists aren't bad, they just need a human touch and some illustartions. I'm more concerened by Polbot creating bird stubs using a taxonomy we don't than I am about these lists. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  23:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I've started on the Morocco list (it being the destination of my last birding trip); as well as the list ordering, etc., I've also discovered from checking against BWP Concise, there's unfortunately a fair scattering of errors in the list avibase generates. It had in e.g. California Quail and Northern Bobwhite, not even tagged as introductions, yet I can't find any evidence that either species had been introduced to Morocco; it also had e.g. Painted Snipe, which again isn't even listed as an accidental in Morocco by BWPC and strikes me as a very unlikely candidate for turning up there too. I removed those altogether as unsupported. There's several other species included which aren't listed by BWPC, but which I left in as they are potential vagrants which could have been recorded since BWPC came out; these need to be double-checked against recent publications of the Moroccan Rare Birds Committee (will do later). Also a very large number (close to 100 in just the non-passerines) were not tagged as accidentals by avibase, but which are so by BWPC. - MPF 08:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Got the Moroccan one finished (thanks largely to the availability of the official Moroccan list on the web; turned out Painted Snipe is on the list, but several others weren't and came out). Only another 50 or so more to do . . .! - MPF 15:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I've been working on the Gambia list, which was also based on Avibase, and have been finding all kinds of errors&mdash;including many species marked as "rare/accidental" that are actually common (per field guides and personal experience). And, as MPF says re: Morocco, a number of species on the Avibase list have never been recorded in The Gambia, or species have been recorded in the country but aren't on the list. So I'm not sure how reliable that information is. Maybe it's better for certain parts of the world. MeegsC | Talk 08:00, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Beak or bill
One of the comments generated from the peer review of bird was the inconsistent usage of bill or beak. I need to pick one and make it consistent throughout the article. So, straw poll time: which is it going to b?. If no clear consensus is arrived at I'll be bold and flick a coin and change it that way. Bill seems to be preferred in the UK (and British English is what the article bird is written in) and some of the ornithological community, beak is preferred in the US and is where the Wikipedia article is. I don't care either way. So, vote away. BTW this is purely for the bird article, I don't wish this to be imposed throughout the rest of WP. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  08:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * In my experience, usage tends to vary somewhat according to the species being described, with 'bill' used for species where it is smaller and/or softer (e.g. warblers, ducks), and 'beak' for species where it is larger and/or harder (e.g. raptors, herons). I'd be inclined to leave it open and not enforce any definitive use. - MPF 08:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed Jimfbleak 12:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The NSOED says "beak" is "especially when strong and hooked as in a bird of prey" and "bill" is "especially when slender, flattened or weak, and in pigeons or web-footed birds". (Hey, where's my beloved Oxford comma?)  Merriam-Webster says "beak" is "especially : a strong short broad bill" and defines "bill" as the generic term.  I'll let you check the American Heritage Dictionary and anything else you might have.
 * I agree with MPF and Jim and add my opinion that in general, if there's a conflict, it's more important for an article to be well written than to be featured. But elegant variation is not necessarily good style.  I hope that's contradictory enough.  :-)  &mdash;JerryFriedman 16:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Now that I think about it, I wouldn't refer to an eagle having a bill or a warbler or a duck having a beak. I'll leave it alone. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  03:06, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

There appear to have been two parallel discussions initiaited on this - the one above, and one at Talk:Bird which didn't get beyond two contributions. I've copied it below. I'm going to assume that this is the main discussion, on the basis that it has the majority of contributions. SP-KP 09:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Copied from Talk:Bird:

We use both (as noted in the peer review). We should probably pick one and go with it. The Wikipedia article is at beak, although I personally prefer bill. At this point I don't care though. What should we use? If no consensus emerges I shall be bold, flick a coin and go with that. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  02:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

In Britain, the term used amongst birders in my experience is bill; beak is regarded more as a word used by "the public", a bit like seagull. HBW seems to use bill exclusively (someone will now find an example where it doesn't, I'm sure!) SP-KP 06:16, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Bird stubs by order
The size of has grown hugely recently, necessitating further splitting. Sub-types by order seem to be the established pattern, and I've made a detailed proposal here. I have to say that a lot of these articles look on the long side to be stubs at all, though; it might be worth the the WPJ having a discussion about localised stub criteria, especially if you're also doing 1.0-style article assessements. Alai 18:23, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * We might want to compare non-stub articles of the same level (order, family...) to draw up a list of minimum topics, like the evolving consensus what makes a species article a nonstub. Then the articles can be worked over rather routinely. Dysmorodrepanis 20:56, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a lot of drive-by stubbing. Length of article is only one criterion. For example, genus articles are often short because additions would tend to be more relevant to the family or species level. If I feel that an article has been stubbed purely on length, invariably by an editor unfamiliar to me, I just destub. jimfbleak 10:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

List of New Jersey birds
This list is almost complete. I need help, though, finding out which birds are accidental, hypothetical, extirpated, etc. I have a number of them marked, but I'm aware that there are still some unmarked accidentals in there (e.g., Atlantic Puffin). Please help. --Birdman1 talk/contribs 20:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Try this link New Jersey Records CommitteePmeleski 14:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but that doesn't include whether a bird is accidental or not. --Birdman1 talk/contribs 15:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Download the NJ State List PDF from the site. Unasterisked Review birds are accidental. Extinct birds are also indicated........Pmeleski 17:33, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Where do you see that it says that? I found another source, but I'm not sure how reliable it is. There is, however, a large bibliography that goes with the site. --Birdman1 talk/contribs 18:33, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Review list Does the first section explain review species adequately for you?????? Let me know if you have additional questions or if I can help further.Pmeleski 21:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Birds Portal
There's a cats portal, a dogs portal - but no birds portal! We need one. Please comment. I'm willing to learn the code necessary to make pretty tables. I'll need backup, though. --Birdman1 talk/contribs 23:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * They've recently done one over at Dino which made me think we could do one too. I was waiting until bird was featured though (should be happening by June). I think we have a decent number of featured and good articles and lots of interesting did you knows, as well as plenty of featured images here and in the commons, so it wouldn't be too hatrd to do. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  00:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Speaking of which, there is a lot of repetition on bird from Bird evolution, and that section seems like a copy or mirror of an old version of Bird evolution. When it says "main article", shouldn't it just be a summary? I agree with the tag there: it's too long and should be summarized more briefly, with more info moved to sub pages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fredwerner (talk • contribs) 23:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC).
 * The article is derived from the section in bird. However the main intention is to expand the new article, as well as reduce the section in bird a bit. The current section in bird is pretty much a summary, though. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  23:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I thought of a bird portal a while back too......but I discounted the idea because I thought time would be spent updating the portal instead of updating articles. But a bird portal would be nice and I'd be glad to help, especially if we can new people involved through it....Pmeleski 02:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the best thing, then, is to get Bird to FAC as by necessity it needs to be on the main page. I've had a bit of a look thus far....There is enough other material to go on a portal page already cheers, Casliber | talk  |  contribs 04:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm busting my gut on it. The wretched article is already 54k long and has 60 refs (it will probably have twice as many refs when I've finished) and is maybe two weeks off being peer-reviewable. Concievably it could be featured by the begining of June. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  04:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll help out when I can. It is starting to look alot more polished so I dips me lid off to ya....cheers, Casliber | talk  |  contribs 06:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Portal:Birds has been initiated! Please come help me get it started. (Do not announce or link to the portal until it is complete, please.) --Birdman1 talk/contribs 22:24, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I've moved it to WikiProject Birds/Portal until it's ready for public consumption. Andy Mabbett 22:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Please move it back immediately! The subpages have been completed messed up! Don't worry - it's understood that it's under construction - it's in the under construction category! --Birdman1 talk/contribs 22:40, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I have moved it back. I know you meant well, but please be careful! --Birdman1 talk/contribs 22:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that. Andy Mabbett 11:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I've added content to the portal. I also left a ref to it at Portal/Directory, this isn't publicity, just what they ask of even unfinished portals apparently. Nice job Birdman, btw. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  05:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The portal is pretty much complete. All that needs to be done is adding quotes. I will automate it a week after it has been put up. Please find bird quotes and add them. Notify me when you think it's done, and I will announce it. --Birdman1 talk/contribs 14:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I added another 16 quotes, there's 20 total there now. The portal seems ready for prime-time.  Will there be a big announcement when it goes public?  Fredwerner 15:20, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you so, so much for adding the quotes. I was procrastinating like there would be no tomorrow. (One thing - please use the quote template next time you put up quotes.) I think we're ready - let's let everyone look it over and then I'll make an announcement. Any help with the announcement would be welcome. Yay! --Birdman1 talk/contribs 22:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * looks good to me, only thing is perhaps we need a bit of variety for the pic? Sabine's Sunbird  talk  22:39, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The portal is officially up and running. I have it set to update automatically for next week and the week after that. Any help, as always, is welcome, as are comments. Maybe we can have a portal peer review in the near future, once it has been up for a little while. --Birdman1 talk/contribs 22:57, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It's beautiful. Nice work, and thanks to everyone involved! Cheers,  Corvus   coronoides  00:32, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, it is nice. Don't we close this page and move to the new home ? Shyamal 03:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Birds is cool! And I add interwiki to Portal:Birds.Jbdy 16:08, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Month
I've been a bit vague and the time for choosing next months collaboration has past. Still there is a clear winner for May, and its bird. I've been working like crazy on it and its actually close to finished though. It'll be peer reviewable in a week or less. Do we want to collaborate on it through this stage or do we want to pick something else? Thoughts? Sabine's Sunbird  talk  06:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The more I think about it the more I think we need to get bird to FA status for portal etc. It was the winner so it comes off the list. Sometimes collabs don't make it to be FAC ready and thats OK (like Common Raven) we'll do it later. cheers, Cas Liber | talk  |  contribs 07:45, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Bird is the current winner of the colab of the month. Please check out the talk page to see what needs doing. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  01:02, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I might do an image of the emerging consensus on phylogeny so that we can replace the S/A image. Can anyone convert PNG into SVG? Dysmorodrepanis 09:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Pigeon racing
I have just rewritten this article. I would appreciate any assistance in improving it in the hope of getting it somewhere near feature article status! --Abbott75 11:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Want to write an article about a Kenyan bird?
I highly recommend Kenya for birding! Here are some pictures of birds that have no articles… just in case anyone has a source and feels like writing something. If no one does, I'll make stubs for them eventually, but stubs are all I can do with Zimmerman, Turner, and Pearson. Although Shrikes and Bush-shrikes by Tony Harris is searchable at Amazon.

I made a page for each one at Commons under the scientific name. Those pages include the author, so you can look it up there.

I'm going to upload a couple more pictures, but this will do for a start:


 * Black-bellied Bustard (picture)
 * White-bellied Bustard (picture)
 * Northern Anteater-Chat (picture)
 * Black Crake (picture, picture of chick)
 * Greater Blue-eared Glossy Starling (picture)
 * Brubru (picture)
 * Grey-headed Social-weaver (picture)
 * Eastern Double-collared Sunbird (picture)
 * Bar-tailed Trogon (picture)
 * Yellow-throated Longclaw (picture)
 * Northern White-crowned Shrike (picture (not mine) and one of mine showing gregariousness)
 * Wattled Starling (picture). Sorry, I misidentified it.  Jim's got a starling book, so he might be the first to get to this one.  If anyone wants to check my other identifications, that would be fine!
 * Emerald-spotted Wood Dove (picture with emerald spots and a sharper picture)
 * Taita Fiscal (picture)
 * Long-toed Lapwing (blurry picture)
 * Tropical Boubou (picture)
 * Striped Kingfisher (picture)
 * Black-lored Babbler (picture). Many authorities consider the East African population a separate species, Turdoides sharpei rather than T. melanops.

&mdash;JerryFriedman 18:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Very cool. The birding in Kenya is fantastic, but that could be said of most of Africa. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  21:07, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I had fun. I think this is everything.  Next: id requests.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 16:09, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Of those still left I'll do the dove, kingfisher, boubou, weaver and lapwing. Jimfbleak 07:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I missed that when I wrote Tropical Boubou. &mdash;JerryFriedman 14:46, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Bird genera to do
Under the task list (at the bottom of the project page), I've added a list of the bird genera for which articles do not yet exist. I've used the Clements list as my source - and the good news is that we only have about 10% of the c.2100 genera left to do (Polbot is currently working through those which begin with the letter T so by the time it's finished, I imagine there will be fewer than 200 articles left outstanding. Given the high number of active contributors of bird-related material, we ought to be able to complete this task easily - how about we set ourselves a little target of having them all done by the end of the year? SP-KP 21:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * While picking low-hanging fruit, I noticed that we submerge Nyctanassa in Nycticorax (defying not only Clements but the AOU). Should you delete Nyctanassa from your list, or is it time for those who know what they're doing to re-examine the lump?  The AOU's South American check-list committee says, "Nyctanassa has been included in Nycticorax in some classifications (e.g., AOU 1983), but Payne & Risley (1976) and Payne (1979) retained Nyctanassa on the basis of skeletal differences . Genetic data (Sheldon 1987, Sheldon et al. 1995, McCracken & Sheldon 1998) also indicate substantial divergence between these taxa, consistent with treatment as separate genera; furthermore, it is not yet certain that the two are sister genera." (Tentative S. Am. check-list)

Jerry, the SACC guys are usually very on their toes about these things; I suspect it's AOU and Clements that are lagging behind. I suggest we split Nyctanassa out - or if we don't, create a redirect and explain the synonymy in the Nycticorax article. SP-KP 22:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * No, I meant that Clements, the AOU, and the AOU's SACC all split Nyctanassa. We and HBW don't.  But I agree with your suggestion.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 23:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Acanthizidae
User:Sabine's Sunbird, above, asked me if I could get Polbot to change all references to family Acanthizidae in the articles Polbot created to Pardalotidae. I've done this now, no problem. (If anyone has similar requests, let me know.) But lots of other articles still link to Acanthizidae, many in lists of birds in various regions. See Special:Whatlinkshere/Acanthizidae for a list. Should there be a redirect? – Quadell (talk) (random) 22:10, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Night-Heron or Night-heron
I noticed (while taking a look at the work-in-progress List of birds of The Gambia page) that White-backed Night-Heron was still showing as a red-link. However, I've discovered that Polbot has created an article called White-backed Night-heron. Since the other night-herons are all listed as Night-Heron, should I redirect that one to make the capitalization standard? MeegsC | Talk 22:10, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

We also have Tiger Herons and Tiger-herons, which should probably be standardized as well. And is it White-crested Tiger-Heron or White-crested Bittern? If the latter, we'll need to change all the appropriate Africa lists... MeegsC | Talk 22:19, 28 July 2007 (UTC)


 * FWIW, this guideline says "The word immediately following a hyphen in a species name is not capitalised; Red-winged Blackbird, Black-faced Butcherbird, Splendid Fairy-wren." – Quadell (talk) (random) 22:22, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Caption suggestions
Looking at the list of genera to do made me notice the caption at the example taxobox in the project page. I'd like to suggest that in captions, people think about what information readers need and what they don't need.


 * They don't need "Image" or "Picture"&mdash;that's obvious.
 * In a species article, they don't need the species&mdash;that's obvious too. Especially, in a species taxobox, the species is identified right above the picture, so it doesn't need to be below it.
 * They might want information about why the picture looks the way it does. For birds, this can include age, sex, plumage, subspecies, and morph.  However, if this information gets unwieldy, it can be left for the picture's description page.

What do you think? &mdash;JerryFriedman 15:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, though I think I've been guilty of putting the name in the past. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  21:57, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Polbot and the aftermath
Most of you are probably aware of the impact that Polbot has had - it's basically filled in all the missing redlinks. I'm not thrilled, but, whatever. Time to clean up. I've asked the bot's creator for a list of everything created so that we can see what needs doing, but first off, a bit of duplication. We have Scrub-robin already, genus Cercotrichas, Polbot created an article for the genus Erythropygia and put all the scrub-robin articles it created there. Which genus do we want to use? I don't know my scrub-robins. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  01:21, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


 * NFI. I'd better have a look at the contributions.......cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Romping all over the lists, redirecting monotypic genera, killing empty categories and cropping genus lists on those looong pages. If Polbot learned that not everything rare is rare due to habitat loss, learned how to deal with monotypic genera, and learned not list ALL the common names, it would actually be cool. I mean, really cool... hey, Rallidae is now actually readable :)
 * The monotypic genera/categories problem will stay with us for a long time. The rest will sort itself out to a point where it's a bit annoying at worst fairy quickly I think. Dysmorodrepanis 14:58, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Naturally there are problems with classification. For instance, it created Black-bellied Bustard as Eupodotis melanogaster, following the IUCN (and in agreement with Zimmerman, Turner, and Pearson, and that Firefly Encyclopedia I often quote) but Bustard lists it as Lissotis melanogaster (following HBW?  Yes ).  So should we just stick with the way we've got thing?  I'm happy to change that species to Lissotis, but we won't find all of these till we see the list.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 15:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Pfff... I think there is a paper around somewhere on bustard phylogeny and systematics. Not sure; try Google Scholar. Dysmorodrepanis 16:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Google Scholar found two papers, neither of which it lets me read. Broders, Osborne, and Wink (2003) helpfully didn't analyze Lissotis, but say that Pitra, Lieckfeldt, Frahnert, Fickel placed it with Ardeotis and Neotis.  However, Pitra et al. (which I also can't read) doesn't give a hit on the word Lissotis.  Anyway, all either of these papers are based on is the cytochrome b gene&don't get me started.
 * My real point is that while some here are capable of making their own decisions on these questions based on the facts, I don't have the expertise or the library. So I'm going to go back to the HBW taxonomy for consistency, and if the question ever gets settled the other way, someone will just have to change it.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 16:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * And while I'm at it, my main objection to categories of birds by country is the long lists of country names you get. However, Polbot is creating such lists in "prose".  I don't feel that a list of 38 African country names in alphabetical order (Black-bellied Bustard) is useful to the reader&mdash;but others may disagree.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 15:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Can the bot be held? It has a number of problems: monotypic genera, nonstandard IUCN link code, "habitat destruction", not using italics in genus taxoboxes, nonstandard use of markup in synonyms section, entirely wrong and indiscriminate use of parentheses in synonyms section. These NEED to be fixed, or we'll be wasting our time on cleanup til the WP server park freezes over. Dysmorodrepanis 16:41, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I suggested to Quadell that he consult a little more. And I brought up some of these issues. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  19:47, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

More bugs (easy to fix methinks):
 * genus pages should have as category: *, not family name <- actually, this might be more of a feature; it allows to check for monotypic genera to be fixed (usually, no genus pages should be listed in family categories, only genus subcategories)
 * "Forest - Montane" habitat on redlist gives an output of "its habitat is montanes".
 * "Source" - technically that's indeed correct, but for thee ase of later maintenance, "References" would be better. Dysmorodrepanis 17:15, 26 July 2007 (UTC)I

Here are the lists of Polbot created bird articles. According to some people the use of bots might help eliminate systematic problems... Another problem I just noticed - this article has the common name of the family in the intro line (many don't), it reads as The Vermilion Cardinal (Cardinalis phoeniceus) is a species of cardinal (bird) in the Cardinalidae family. It should be is a species of cardinal in the or better as ''is a species in the cardinal family (Cardinalidae). Sabine's Sunbird  talk  19:57, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Birds: 1, 2, 3


 * I changed all the autocreated Amazona parrots to Amazons - funny, it automatically made a couple as Amazons. I suppose it did help more than it guffed up but still a lot of checking to do...cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:05, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Gonna have to check the ranges too. The Black-billed Shrike-tyrant is listed as being from the Falklands and South Georgia; its really just a vagrant there. And the new genus articles are not adding existing species articles to their lists, only the ones that POLBOT has created. Grrrr..... Sabine's Sunbird  talk  01:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The bot-owner speaks
Greetings! I was just made aware of this thread, and thought I would comment here. This discussion is very useful, and I hope to improve Polbot as I go. I'm also quite willing to have her fix the inevitable problems she creates if you let me know what they are (and if they can be fixed by simple repetitive changes).

First off, let me admit my limitations: I'm just a computer programmer who thinks birds are pretty. I'm not an ornithologist -- I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't had a formal biology class of any sort since high school. I absolutely need the advice from you experts to get these new stubs right. For taxonomy, I'm just using IUCN info, which is not uncontroversial but not markedly wrong either, apparently.

Now I'd like to address some of the concerns here, and ask for advice.
 * 1) For monotypic genera, I could make them redirects to the species articles. The reason I didn't is that I don't know whether the IUCN list is correct for birds are not. I wouldn't want to make a genus a redirect to a species if there's another species in the genus I don't know about. Do you think I should have Polbot redirect all genera it think have a single species, even if it might be wrong?
 * 2) Polbot currently references a "Fauna of X country" category in each endemic species (and only in endemic species). Most countries have such a category, but some do not. Some have a more specific "Birds of X country" category, and I wouldn't be surprised if some have even more specific categories. (Passerines of Brazil? Parrots of Costa Rica?) I figure I can go back and replace "fauna of" with "birds of" for those countries with such categories. What do you guys think would be best?
 * 3) Polbot used to list French and Spanish common names as well as English ones. I fixed that, but the problem remains on older entries. That's hard to fix retroactively. I figure it's not that big of a problem. (I'm hoping you agree.)
 * 4) IUCN data lists several reasons why a species might be threatened. Many are rather obscure to non-experts. The only one I saw we have an article for is habitat loss, so I included that -- but I don't want to be misleading either and ascribe everything to habitat loss when other factors play a role. What's the best thing for Polbot to do?
 * 5) By the way, if you want me to make taxonomic changes to taxoboxes in lots of articles, whether this involves articles Polbot made or not, that's fairly easy for me to do. Just let me know.
 * 6) The species that have dozens of countries are problematic. I'm not sure what to do here. A human reader can just summarize them as "exists in most of southern Africa", but that's not an easy decision for the bot to make.
 * 7) Polbot adds the BirdTalk template to talk pages, and classifies them all as stubs. They're probably all low priority (since they didn't previously have articles), but I'm just not qualified to make that sort of a determination. Should Polbot default these all to low priority, or just leave that blank? (By the way, I added the "needs-photo" parameter to the template. You like?)
 * 8) The IUCN link is cut-and-pasted from the "recommended citation" thing on the IUCN page. It's actually easier for me to do that than reformat it into an IUCN source template. Is that okay? Is there some reason why it's better to use the template?
 * 9) Is Polbot doing the "synonyms" correctly?

Are there other suggested improvements? Please let me know. (I've added this page to my watchlist.) – Quadell (talk) (random) 02:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * 5 - We don't have an article for Acanthizidae, we still consider it a subfamily of the Pardalotidae. Any chance you can change the instances of Acanthizidae to what we use for the genus and species articles you created? Sabine's Sunbird  talk  02:49, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll add it to her To-do list. – Quadell (talk) (random) 03:08, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * :I think marking your stub creations with importance=Low is fine; most of us only mark them higher for iconic species, or those with articles that have reached GA or FA status and obviously anything created by Polbot is unlikely to tick any of those boxes! MeegsC | Talk 02:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * On the long lists of countries, I was just whingeing (sp?). It's better to have the information than not have it, and eventually humans with range maps may be able to improve on those lists where possible.  I mentioned the importance of distinguishing between vagrancy and regular occurrence at your talk page.
 * On monotypic genera, Polbot really needs to know what's in a genus when it creates the article. Maybe one of the suggestions I left at your talk page will work.  If not, I recommend posting a to-do list here of "monotypic general from the IUCN that possibly should be redirects".  Or, maybe as good, create the articles as redirects and post a to-do list here of "redirected monotypic genera to check".   The worst problems seem to arise when the bot does things that might cause problems without alerting anybody or that require people to check through thousands of new articles to find a small subset with potential problems.  The solution is (sorry to pile on) consulting beforehand and maybe switching the bot to unproblematic tasks after the first few dozen or few hundred edits of a new type; that way people can alert you to problems while there are only a few instances.
 * On problems like "in the cardinal (bird) family", Polbot might be able to change it to "in the cardinal family automatically. If it keeps a record of what families it did that with, you or someone can check that the substitutions are okay, or maybe you can tell it the correct family names yourself.
 * Are you already changing "in montanes" to "in montane forests" or "in mountain forests"?
 * On reasons for rarity, I'd say put them in the articles. Use your judgement or ask for help on which should be redlinked.
 * Don't let the presence of experts fool you. Some of us are acting like experts without ever taking a biology course past high school, and have no opinion at all on whether (*looks up article*) the scrubwrens and gerygones belong in Pardalotidae.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 05:05, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I've finished the birds now. Polbot created over 5,000 articles on bird species. They are all listed at User:Polbot/taxa listing. – Quadell (talk) (random) 00:35, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Plocepasserinae
Anyone have any strong opinions on whether the eight species in the aptly named Plocepasserinae (Histurgops, Philetairus, Plocepasser, Pseudonigrita) belong with the Ploceidae (HBW) or the Passeridae (IUCN, ITIS)? If no one does, I'm going to put them back into Ploceidae, contrary to Polbot. And since people seem to classify these four genera together, do we need a stub on them?

While I'm at it, I'd like to propose a change in the common name we have for a species, Philetairus socius, from "Social Weaver" to "Sociable Weaver". The latter name is much more common. Google results (including Scholar) available on request. Anyway, we have to do something about the fact that Social Weaver redirects to Weaver, an article where " Social Weaver " occurs. &mdash;JerryFriedman 21:51, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with your statements here and above about following HBW unless there is a good reason not to (in which case whoever has that reason can go ahead, be bold, and explain his changes). Sabine's Sunbird  talk  22:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay. I was going to be bold, but 1) Polbot anticipated me by created Sociable Weaver, and 2) Weaver has a comment at that species, "  ".  Does anyone know what that reference supports?  The unpopular choice of English name?  There's an identical comment at Scaly Weaver, which also has another English name (the misleading "Scaly-feathered Finch"). &mdash;JerryFriedman 02:37, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I suggest taking that up with Dysmorodrepanis, that is his style. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  02:47, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I just realized I could see who added those notes, and it was indeed him.  &mdash;JerryFriedman 02:48, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

One good Tern desreves...
Polbot has created the tern articles with all of them as members of Laridae, which i find somewhat gulling. Anyone want to skim through these and tern them into respectable Sternidae pages? Sabine's Sunbird  talk  02:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It does seem a bit skuaed.
 * Okay, I confess I have no enthusiasm for such a project, but can't the bot do it? Have you asked?  &mdash;JerryFriedman 04:42, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think there are that many, but I guess we could ask. It isn't a simple all laridae = Sternidae thing though. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  05:17, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'd be willing to have Polbot do this, but I'd need to know how to determine which should stay in Laridae and which should switch to Sternidae. – Quadell (talk) (random) 11:31, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Anything with "tern" in the species name should be changed to Sternidae, and the lead sentence should say "a species of tern", not "a species of gull.  As far as I know, no other articles need this change.  (Sabine's Sunbird fixed Blue Noddy and I just fixed Lesser Noddy.)
 * Next, countries that say anything like "vag." in the IUCN pages should be removed or noted as the results of vagrancy here. Does anyone else agree? &mdash;JerryFriedman 15:40, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  21:11, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, that's now on Polbot's todo list. – Quadell (talk) (random) 01:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Wow, my brain is hurting from all these puns, haha. Sheep81 02:27, 3 August 2007 (UTC)