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Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149


There seems a fair deal of confusion about namimg animals and plants. The normal convention is that English names of species begin with capitals, eg--Magnificent Frigatebird, but groups are lower case and, usually, plural as in the frigatebirds.

Binomial scientific names are written with a capitalised generic name and lower case specific name, Fregata magnificens. Higher taxonomic groupings are always capitalised.

Should these guideline be part of the Wikipedia conventions, assuming that they are not already? jimfbleak 16:28 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)


What about raptor/raptors or bird of prey/birds of prey jimfbleak 14:54 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC). Some 40 group monographs advertised in a birders' magazine used the plural invariablly for the title, eg Owls of the World. It is standard practice to use the plural for groups, eg woodpeckers, and capitalised singular for species, eg Great Spotted Woodpecker Jimfbleak

I didn't move it. I did make a link to frigatebird more direct, and remove a self-reference. It is standard practice in Encyclopaedias to name things in the singular and not the plural. Look at raptor in Encylopaedia Britannica [1]. Mintguy


Ok jimfbleak 17:00 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Your picture of a vulture Image:Flvulture62.jpg was very nice, but it was a bit big (in both pixels and bytes) and also a bit washed out, so I made it smaller and brought the colour/brightness levels up. Mintguy

One more thing, please don't make redirects to pages that don't exist yet. You end up with a broken link (i.e. one that looks like it works but doesn't e.g. Common Loon. Mintguy ... later.... which now of coure works, cheers. Mintguy

Hi Jim. You are making great progress on the bird entries, I see. Keep it up! I'll try to chime in with some of the Southern Hemisphere species now and then, though I have a terrible habit of over-commiting myself to lots of different projects!

It seems to me that there is some serious confusion about the proper way to name birds (flora and fauna generally, actually), particularly with regard to capitalisation. I think it would be a good idea to thrash this stuff out once and for all at a suitable location, such as Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora and fauna). If we can get the policy right by making some proposals, getting feedback and reaching general agreement, then it can become a general recommendation for all to be aware of.

Let me know what you think, or better yet, just go ahead and draft something, post it at that link above (or somewhere similar) and start the ball rolling.

Cheers - Tannin 12:25 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)


Thanks for comments and support. Not sure why all links to British names have been removed from loon article, so I'll put them back. I will try to remember to write main article before putting the redirect to it! Incidentally, in the interests of transatlantic harmony, I've used N. American loon for the group heading, but the British diver form for the species articles with appropriate links. jimfbleak 13:34 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

I removed the links because they are redirects to pages that you have already linked. e.g. "Yellow-billed Loon or White-billed Diver" both end up on the same page, it's not required. Mintguy


If the links were redundant, it is the "Loon" versions that should go, since the "Diver" versions are the actual articles. My thinking in putting in the redirects is that an American or Canadian contributor might write redundant material if a search for, eg, Common Loon gave no result, not realising that editable material existed under Great Northern Diver. I'm just trying to save unnecessary work by linking the N American and British names. jimfbleak 15:50 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)


Well the redirects are there, so there is no problem of searching and not finding anything. It's usual to link to the first reference to a particular item, it doesn't matter whether you use the American name or the British one Mintguy


Point taken, I'll reverse the Brit and American names so that the substantive article comes first. I don't mind then whether the extra links are in or out since, as you say there are redirects from the species themselves.jimfbleak
BTW I don't want to discourage you in what you're doing. It's really great. I'm just trying to massage some of it into Wikipedia style, but you're catching on fast. :).

Another message for you on my talk page. --mav

Help. I've uploaded a picture Flanhinga2b which I've checked is viewable in the upload file. However, in the article Anhinga it only shows as a place marker. I've put pictures in Ibis and New World vulture without problems. Any ideas what's wrong? jimfbleak

I've fixed it. The problem was that the file was called 'Flanhinga2b.JPG' and your link was to 'Flanhinga2b.jpg' and links are case sensitive. BTW, were the changes I made to Image:Flvulture62.jpg okay? I wasn't sure whther enchancing the colour would have meant that the colours no longer reflected the true colour of the bird. Mintguy 16:56 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)
I just compressed 'Flanhinga2b.JPG' from 25k to 8k for faster viewing, if you're happy with it, I'll delete the older version. Similarly with Image:Flvulture62.jpg. Mintguy


thanks again. I didn't pick up the case sensitivity. All picture changes are OK by me jimfbleak

Over here we have (I think) only four true thrushes, Jim: the European Song Thrush T. philomelos, which is introduced but, in a gentlemanly way, restricts itself to a small area around Melbourne and blends in with the natives without fuss or bother; the Common Blackbird (of which the lesssaid the better!), the Russet-tailed Thrush Zoothera heinei which I know little of as it's range is well north of me bar that it's very similar to; the Bassian Thrush Z. lunulata. I started doing a Bassian Thrush entry just now but then stopped again when I realised that it has a wide range - "PNG, se Asia, Siberia & eastern Europe" outside Australia and figured that you might be in progress with it.

As a matter of interest, I saw one on Saturday, in a suburban Ballarat garden. They are normally very shy and stay in thick cover. The fact that one was poking around that garden only 3 or 4 metres away from three humans spoke volumes for the severity of the drought in the bush nearby. I think it might have been a very young one - it seemed quite fearless, and I am sure that it's somewhere inside a cat by now.

Most of our "thrushes" are actualy shrike-thrushes, family Pachycephalidae, including the Grey Shrike-thrush, Colluricincla harmonica, which manages to be a direct competor with the Blackbird in two senses: (a) food & habitat, (b) song - the Grey Shrike-thrush never fails to amaze us with its volume, melody and variation. Bar lyrebirds, he's probably the best singer in the country. (The little Golden and Rufous Whistlers, pound for pound, are louder though. (Same family.)

On the organisation thing, it seems to me that you are steaming along very nicely, and I'm up to my eyeballs in all sorts of subjects. Best if you do it your way and if I can't make sense of it, I'll sing out.

Best -- Tannin

PS: looks like there is some confusion coming up with White's Thrush! See: http://www.wpbirds.com/WP%20birdspecies/Taxonomy/Taxonomy%20d.htm My Handbook of Aust., NZ & Antarctic birds will give the latest official classification in great detail - unfortunately, I need vol 7 and they are only up to vol 6 at present!

RE browser issues: Let me guess, you have IE 5? Do you have the same problem with lithium and United States? --mav 19:59 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

I have the same problem at school with their ancient installations of IE5. In addition to many rendering bugs the first version of IE5 also had serious security holes. It would be a good idea to upgrade. --mav

Jim, you are doing a great job on the bird entries. I saw your plea for a little help on the New World species. That's not my area I'm afraid, but I certainly intend to add some more Southern Hemisphere ones (I've done three or four so far). Might not be right away though. I seem to average just one or at most two substantial entries a day, and I'm doing a series of aircraft ones right now. But don't feel discouraged! Tannin

Re: Vance Packard you asked "Is this a work in progress??" Answer: Its all a work in progress, buddy, as youve no doubt figured out by now. :) -'Vert

Hi Jim! I had to do some research, what "Thorburn" could mean, but now I found out ;-) No, they are not, the pix are from a German field guide ("Naumann, Naturgeschichte der Vögel Mitteleuropas", 1905). You find all public domain images on this page: http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/birds/naumann.htm. There is also an index of english bird names on that page: http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/birds/regengl.htm. So if you want to include these pictures yourself in your articles, you can do so, as all images are public domain. -- Cordyph 19:25 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)



Hi there. Great work you're doing on birds! just one thing -- when you turn Wren in to a general page, and put what was there into a specific name (which is a good thing to do), could you use the "move page" function rather than a copy & paste? That preserves the article history of the text that is moved to Winter Wren. keep up the good work! cheers -- Tarquin 17:18 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

Where did you get the great image of a turtle dove? --mav


Naumann's 1905 paintings are at http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/birds/regengl.htm. See Cordyph's message above.jimfbleak 17:29 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

That's great! It would also be a good idea to mention that and provide the weblink when uploading the images. That way everybody knows the images are in the public domain and where to get more. --mav

RE image question:
I use an image program like the free GIMP (image > scale image) or not so free Photoshop to resize the picture and then place that in an empty cell in a table (<tr><td>{image goes here}</td></tr>). --mav

Hi Jim. I've been having an experimental tinker with the table layout for the bird families in Pardalotidae. Take a look and see what you think. It's a work in progress, but you'll get the idea.

Also, I think some of the passerine families are out of date. I'm inclined to run an eye over them and bring the Australasian ones into line with HANZAB (see reference in Pardalotidae). What do you think? Tannin 13:42 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

Jim, I just had a play with Hawk and realised that we should have an article that describes the names given to birds of prey. For the non-expert, terms like "hawk", "eagle", "kite" and "harrier" are really confusing. (They confuse me too sometimes!) It shouldn't try to describe any particular species, just say things like:

  • Eagles are large raptors with long, broad wings and massive legs. True eagles have feathered legs and build large stick nests. (Non-specialists often use the term very broadly, to indicate almost any raptor.)
  • Kites are raptors with long wings and weak legs which spend a great deal of time soaring. In general they take live prey but mostly feed on carrion.
  • Falcons are small to medium sized raptors with long pointed wings that, unlike most other raptors, belong to the Falconidae rather than the Accipitridae. Many are particularly swift flyers. No falcons build nests; instead, they appropriate old nests of other birds or lay their eggs on cliff ledges or in tree hollows.
  • Harriers are ...

... and so on. I guess it could go at bird of prey or raptor. The important thing is that we don't try to describe the birds themselves here (there are plenty of other pages to do that in), but try to describe the terms. Why is this bird called a "kite", while that one is a "harrier"? Sort of a glossary, I guess. Tannin

Raptor classification. Yes! It's a mine field! I've been doing some digging today. It seems that the official Australian & NZ list agrees with the South African one, but the Americans (as we know) are quite different, and I can't seem to find an English one. HANZAB has a link to the current Oz & NZ list (in PDF form) and this South African site is useful too. Can you point me at any useful resources on your side of the world?
Also, I made a start on that glossary idea in raptor. Go right ahead and add to it and/or move it if you want to. Tannin
PS: about raptor - I've nearly always heard it used to mean "eagles. falcons & etc.", as opposed to birds of prey in general (owls & etc.) but that needs checking: maybe it's just the Australian usage.

Jim, your bird pages are wonderful! I was just browsing some of the goose articles you're working on. Great work! -- Stephen Gilbert 18:30 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

Jim, I'm confused. Which table is too wide? Tannin

Sorry, I actually meant Accipitridae, which this morning looks OK anyway! However, if you know the answers to the editting questions it would be helpful even outside the bird topics (the chemical element entries have tables too wide.
I think you might have a browser problem. Sounds like you have a very old browser which is not compatible with web standards - in particular, CSS, which is what Wikipedia (and almost everything else too these days) uses for control over layout. See Wikipedia:Browser page size limits for some help on this - it's written to help people deal with a different problem, but applies to this one too. -- T

Moving a page is easy: on the standard view (i.e., if you have not customised your user preferances) you have a list of things down the left-hand side:

  • Main Page
  • Recent changes
  • Random page
  • My watchlist
  • My contributions
  • Current events
  • View discussion
  • Move this page
  • and so on

First, make sure that your intended destination page is available - i.e, it either doesn't exist yet, or else it's a redirect with no history.

Then go to the page you want to move and click move this page. Type in the new page name, tick yes to move the talk page as well, and that's it!

The software is pretty bulletproof. If you try to move to a page that already exists, it just bombs out and does nothing. (Except, as I mentioned, you can move over the top of a redirect if it has no edit history.) It also creates a redirect at the old page, so that links are not broken by the move.

One more thing: if you move a page, always check what links here for double redirects. Let's do an example. We will imagine that someone has made an article at Duck hawk about the Perigrine Falcon. There are links to it from various places, and also a redirect to it at Black-cheeked falcon. You want to move it to Peregrine falcon. Right now (we will imagine for the sake of example) Peregrine falcon is a redirect to Duck hawk, but you think it should be the other way about.

So, first you check that Peregrine falcon is indeed empty or (as in this imaginary case) a redirect with no history. Then you go to Duck hawk and use move this page. You started with

and you wind up with:

And there we have a problem, as any link to Black-cheeked falcon won't work - the Wiki software only allows one redirect. (Think about it: if you could link redirects together in a chain, sooner or later some fool would make Flying redirect to Dutchman and Dutchman redirect to Flying and if you clicked on either link you'd be bounced back and forwards between the two pages forever, and never be able to dock in any port ... er ... I mean read either page.)

So you need to manually edit Black-cheeked falcon to make it point to the new main entry: i.e., make it read #REDIRECT [[Peregrine falcon]].

Last thing: if you can't move the page because the new page already exists and it isn't just a redirect with no history, you need to ask one of the admins to do it for you. There is a proper procedure for this which I forget, but a note in Wikipedia:Village pump or an admin user's talk page will do the trick. Tannin

In answer to your "idle question", here's an "idle answer" ;-). Although I've received not more than 4 emails about it, this is perhaps the most FAQ about me. (Ignoring spam that ask other, more personal questions.)

The story is boring. Back in 1994, when I created my first Interent account, I felt that usernames were akin to nom de plumes, so I tried to select one that I felt I could keep permanently. Unfortunately, my first choice Hebdomeros (from the title character of the painter's Giorgio Chirico's only novel) was too long for my ISP to accept, so I had to quickly think of another username. A cross the room I saw the book The Poetry of Llywarch Hen, & quickly butchered Llywarch to fit my ISP's length requirements. I've since kept llywrch as my own Internet identity, using it on my numerous accounts (e.g., at Wikipedia, Slashdot, eBay, etc.) so that people know they are dealing with the same person on the other side of the computer screen.

I could also mention that I do have some Welsh in my background (my father's middle name is Dee), but I have far more German, English & mongrel American ancestors. And no, I do not indulge in what I am told are the three favorite hobbies of Welshmen -- rugby, fighting & procreation -- although my wife might disagree about the last. -- llywrch 18:05 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

In the future when creating a disambiguation page please fix all the resulting misdirected links. Otherwise a grumpy fuddy-duddy like me will revert the change use a disambiguation block instead. :) --mav

It's great that you are uploading all those PD images but if you could put the source in the upload summary when you upload this will make it so that you or anybody else doesn't have to add that information to the image page in the future. Placing this information on the image page also makes sure people are aware of where to get more images. --mav

could you give more specific names to the pictures? "Image:Marsh.JPG" could be a picture of a marsh itself, etc. -- Tarquin 09:12 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)
For example: Image:Bean.JPG is not at all a good name and is very likely to be overwritten by somebody uploading an image of a bean. --mav

Thanks for the parrot info, Jim. I plan to do some work on the parrot pages soon (well, there is only one page so far, but there will be more eventually) and I'll drop that info into it when I get there. As for list of birds, my original idea was to just try to give a rough indication of range and concentrate on keeping it brief, though I'm not wedded to that idea by any means. I'd even have reverted that "ostrich in northern hemisphere" addition on the grounds that it's a bit misleading in that context, but it's nice to see others hop in and contribute to the bird pages and I didn't want to discourage anyone!

By the way, I am astonished at your productivity. I write maybe one new entry a day, not even that quite often, and you are knocking them out like a production line! Tannin

Another user posted a question about the copyright of the images you've been uploading. Please see my talk page for details. --mav

Distributions on the way, Jim. The Black kite is indeed one we see here - as a matter of fact, Belinda and I had a really good look at one not too long ago. He (or she) circled and circled just a few feet above our heads, demonstrating the fine art of flight without flapping for our close-up education, as we stood on the side of a highway, for ... well, ages. Eventually Belinda pointed out that there must have been a reason for him to come so close and stay so long, such as a juicy carcass, and sure enough, I found a roadkill Black Wallaby in the grass close by. He was patiently waiting for us to move on before he could eat his fill. So we did.

Curiously, HANZAB says that they are not found in SE Asia west of the Wallace Line, but they are reasonably common in Australia & New Guinea. Odd that there should be that gap between NG and Thailand. I'll add to the entry shortly.

The Black-winged Kite we don't have, but we do have two close relatives of his, the Black-shouldered Kite (Elanus axillaris) and the Letter-winged Kite (E. scriptus). I have it in the back of my mind to do an entry on the elanid kites one day soon, they are one of my particular favourites. At least the Black-shouldered Kite is, we see them quite often, perhaps 30 or 40 feet up, hovering with that distinctive rapid beat of the wingtips, quartering long grass for mice. They too seem fearless. Often I have stopped the car when one has been patrolling the roadside verge and they don't seem to mind us at all if we stay in the car or keep a sensible distance. Wonderful aerialists. I imagine that the Black-winged Kite is very similar, though I've never seen one, of course.

One day I'm going to travel up to the channel country where the Letter-winged Kite lives. They are unique among raptors in that they are nocturnal, spending the days roosting in a colonial tree, and hunting from just before dusk through till just after dawn. It is very similar to the Black-shouldered to look at, I gather, but has an extraordianary life cycle, depending almost exclusively on one particular species of rat. When it rains (which is seldom in that barren part of the world) the rat population booms, reaching plague levels in just a month or two, and the Letter-winged Kites start breeding like crazy, one clutch after another clutch, after another - until there are thousands of kites and no rats left. Then they starve.

Many migrate in search of food, travelling 1000 miles or more to the coast, but their diet is too specialised, and they can't survive here, in the fertile part of the country. Before long, there is just the remnant population in the dry riverbed trees of the channel country once more, hanging on grimly for the next rat plague. Tannin (I just dropped back and corrected the above - I said the LW Kite looks like a LW kite - I meant it looks like the the BS Kite, of course. --T) (Oh - and the reason for the name is very mundane. The black markings on the underside of their wings look—with a lot of imagination—like the letter "M" or "W".)

Australasia and Australasia ecozone
Hello
No problem for merging both of them, and making the second one a redirect to the first one. I'll keep the second name for all the ecozone/ecoregion stuff in case someone is from a different opinion later on, and prefer that both names be separated for clarity sake. A similar merge already exist for Antartica. You may do it if you wish, or I'll do it later. user:anthere

You guys are probably aware of this already, but just in case - "Australasia" does have a meaning in other than an ecozone context. As part author of that page, I should really have worked harder on making those other meanings clear - but I cheerfully confess to only really being interested in the ecozone side of it and neglecting the rest. Tannin

I am aware of this. This is just as true for the oceania ecozone and the antarctica ecozone. Right now, some of these articles are still work in progress...so...it might be ok to merge them right now. I consider it should better be separated in the end...which is why I will try to always refer to the full name, keeping the opportunity to separate them later on. What do you think ? (eh, why don't you add the other meaning, and put the ecozone side of it on the australasia ecozone page ? :-)) user:anthere

I guess you will have already seem my reordering of the list of orders in bird, and hopped in to fix up the ones I didn't know.

For the Drongo (or Drongos?), I'll find out. There is only one in Australia - and what a name for the poor thing! I don't know if you are up on Aussie slang in the UK, but everybody here knows what a "drongo" is - it's the sort of guy that always turns up at parties uninvited, wearing a loud shirt that clashes with his tie and doesn't fit right anyway, talks in a loud, braying voice, is really, 'really boring, and accidently spills beetroot on the new white carpet. He quite possibly means well, but everyone else can't stand him. So, calling a bird the "Spangled Drongo" really doesn't seem fair.

I'll see if I can do some digging over the next day or two, though I don't have much that isn't Oz/NZ/Antarctica. I'll let you know if I can't find anything.

By the way, have you given any thought to setting up the birds thing as a Wikiproject? There seems no immediate need to, as you and I (especially you) are the only two doing any great amount of work on birds at the moment and we have a good understanding of what we want to do without bothering with all the formal guideline stuff, but it might be worth doing at some stage. Who knows? We might turn up someone wanting to take on the New World area, where you are less well-informed (or so I think you said) and I know nothing. Tannin 14:43 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm... Sibley-Alquist taxonomy. Is this a case of "great minds think alike"? Or is it "fools never differ"? I had exactly the same idea in mind myself! I've been rather tied up with other things these last few days. (Yes, believe it or not, I still have a life outside Wikipedia ... well .. sort of.) I've had a quick look at Sibley-Alquist taxonomy, and found nothing to object to. I think we might as well start linking to it right away. At some stage I'd like to try to have a go at explaining the relationships between the bird families in a way that makes it more intuitive, probably with a diagram. But I have to do quite a bit more reading first.

The "The Early History of Modern Birds etc." you referenced was very interesting reading. In searching for it, I stumbled across this: Early origins of modern birds and mammals: molecules vs. morphology. If you don't mind downloading a 9 page PDF, I think you'll find it well worth looking over. Tannin 13:10 Apr 6, 2003 (UTC)

Oh. And I had not the slightest idea that cisticolas were not unique to Australia. (As you no doubt discovered for yourself.) Learn something every day. I suppose I should have checked on Google first. I get so used to everything over here being different that when they ain't different I get a big surprise! Tannin


Hi!
I am glad you add birds endemics to the ecozones. I have very little knowledge in the bird topic unfortunately. I will be very happy if you could little by little add info about these birds when highly related to ecoregions. What I mean here is it there are some birds uniquely (or nearly uniquely) found in some regions and not in others. Be they threatened for whatever reason in that specific area, they are very likely to disappear. If it is the case for some species, I think it would be great to add them little by little to the appropriate ecoregion page (btw, the ecoregion frame will not be ready before at least a while, for I need to find a way to geographically identify each of these regions - but there is no reason not to begin to add to these regions before the frame is final).
Another thing that is of major importance with birds, is that contrary to most species, they migrate, and the migration is done on very big distances. Some regions they just fly over, and nearly stop, but it is frequent they stop for longer time (if only winter) in a region that may be very far away from the region they spend most of the year in. Now, if for some reason, their winter habitat is damaged, the population can dramatically decrease. Just as well, I think it would be nice to report species of birds that might be endangered for these short-time stay habitat destruction.
This reporting might be of great interest for identification of areas who might require special attention in terms of conservation. I tried to generally report one case of water bird threatening situation here Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecoregions/Template2.
Here is a list of particularly interesting ecoregions to consider List of the Global 200, and a list of List of Australasia ecoregions.
What do you think ? User:anthere

Hi. Well...It is not as if the ecozones and ecoregions were gonna disappear any time soon :-) Any link will be welcome of course. Warning ! the talk page is getting too big !!!

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