Talk:Extinct birds

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Contents 1 Structure of page 2 Structure of entries 3 Dodo 4 Hawaiʻi 5 Rename article... 6 Ivory-billed Woodpecker 7 Prehistoric Birds 8 Extinct since 1600, earlier extinctions not included? 9 Extinction Dates 10 Birds of prey subspecies

[edit] Structure of page

I'm beginning to wonder how to structure this page. The original idea was to list the species by date of extinction, but they are often not sure. Would a geographical sorting be better?

[edit] Structure of entries

Also, is it a good idea to put brief texts about the species on the listing page, or should I drop them and keep all the information on the separate bird pages? I'm beginning to lean towards the later approach. --Pinkunicorn

I'd favor the following approach: a brief statement of area of occurrence and date of extinction for every taxon, followed by an indent for subspecies. Additional explanations could go here initially (but briefly, a few lines at max - see Bay Thrush and Rodrigues Starling for taxa which demand longer explanations), but with actual species/subspecies pages becoming available, they should be merged into these ASAP (see Labrador Duck for a species where only the Location and Date info needs to be here really). Trivial information should not be put on this page either way; explanatory notes should be reserved for remarks on taxonomy

A problem is that the verification of an extinction usually takes decades (the 50-year-caveat), so many of the taxa I listed today are not officially extinct, but the only reason for that is that nobody has gone looking yet. -- Dysmorodrepanis 19:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dodo

Was the dodo really hunted to extinction? Surely not for food. The Dutch name was walgvogel. Walg=loathing vogel=bird. Even after days of kooking the beast was inedible and the saylors refused to eat its flesh. Jcwf

Dodo had no enemies on the island. With human traffic, it was gone within 80 years. The forests it lived in were destroyed and the animals settlers brought with them, pigs, rats, and cats, destroyed the dodo's nests. Will add something. Ortolan88

[edit] Hawaiʻi

I believe there used to be a giant flightless goose in Hawaii, but I don't know if this became extinct after 1600. I suspect probably before. Mintguy 22:20 Dec 12, 2002 (UTC)

The nene isn't particularly giant, to my knowledge, but it is flightless and endangered. It's the state bird. - Montréalais

There was a greater nene (nene-nui), a giant nene (unnamed as of yet, but listed), 4 species of moa-nalo (goose-like oversized ducks of the mallard kind) and at least 2 more goose species with undetermined affiliation. They are found on the page on Recent prehistoric extinctions as all became extinct before 1600. -- Dysmorodrepanis 18:20, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Why is Hawaii listed as the hardest-hit area, when Guam (according to the next sentence) has had a higher rate of extinction? Tokerboy

I think what it's saying is that 30% of all bird extinctions ever occurred in Hawaii. Although 60% of Guam's species were lost, they were probably a smaller percentage of all extinctions ever. -- Zoe

Ever? That seems very unlikely. 60% of extinctions due to man sounds more like it -- stewacide 16:55, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

aaah, a closer reading reveals you are probably right, and I have fixed it to make this distinction more clear. Tokerboy

Probably needs some updating though. I'd rather say 60% of human-induced bird extinctions in the Late Quarternary were in the Pacific, generally. 2000 species of rails alone are often cited, but this is an estimate based on what has been dug up (literally) to date. The 60% Hawaii figure dates from the mid-80s when this was the only major area of the Pacific reasonably well explored. -- Dysmorodrepanis 19:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rename article...

Shouldnt the name of this article be List of extinct birds? -AnonIs this article for all extinct birds, or only recently extinct ones? As written the page should probable be called Historically extinct birds or something like that, since it seems to be exclusively on extinctions caused by man. -- stewacide 17:00, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think that you are right about the nature of the content, but I'm not sure that the name change is necessary. If I wanted to look for info on extinct birds, I would look under this title. Although strictly speaking prehistoric birds are also extinct, you would expect to find Archaeopteryx under Fossil birds or prehistoric birds rather than this article.

The book of the same name, incidently, contained exactly what I would expect it to, excluding fossil species. jimfbleak 17:12, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

If that's the intent of this page then I think it does need a name change. I can't think of any reason, for example, that something like Teratornis [1] shouldn't be included in a list of Extinct birds, although clearly it doesn't fit with the page (since they went extinct a few million years ago with no help from man).

IMHO this page should be renamed to Historically extinct birds, with Extince birds either serving as a catch-all or a pointer to Historically extinct birds and Prehistorically extince birds. List of historically extinct birds might be even better. -- stewacide 17:28, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

there are 14 links directly to this page. No-one has thought it necessary to create a link as you describe. I'm especially wary of List of..., sicne sooner or later some idiot will wonder why it isn't alphabetical (believe me, it happens. Jim

Well, I've been over the Prehistoric Birds list. It was not bad as it was very comprehensive (I would not have had the passion to copy everything relevant from the FMNH list...) but the layout was somewhat messed up. I will do some finetuning, remove the redlinks etc, but the Prehistorics page can't stand as it is. It's far too large now I included all the late-Quarternary-pre-1500 extinctions I could lay my hands on. It has to be split into 2 sections: pre-Late Quarternary birds and Late Quarternary prehistoric extinctions - the former being without human "aid" and most of the latter will be. Technically, the split will be along the lines of "Fossil" and "Prehistoric" as per the Wikipedia categories for taxon classification ("Fossil" and "Subfossil" in scientific lingo).

But I cannot think of good unambiguous names - "Fossil" is misleading perhaps, as Wikipedia as of now does not distinguish between subfossils and fossils. "Prehistoric" is a catchall term for both. The easiest bit is this here page - it should be renamed "Historically Extinct Birds" or such - technically, the appropriate term would be "Recent", but "Recently Extinct Birds" would be both misleading and wrong the; correctly it would be "Birds Extinct in Recent times". Then, the unelegant way would be a disambig for "Extinct Birds" listing the 3 categories (unelegant because most ppl will think of the dod or the IBW when hearing "Extinct Birds", and not of Confuciusornis). The elegant way would be a a redirect from "Extinct Birds" to this "Historically..." and disambig line or two at the head of this page.

So, any good suggestions for how to name the 2 non-Recent extinction pages? "Fossil Birds" and "Later Quarternary Prehistoric Birds" are the least awkward solutions that I can think of. -- Dysmorodrepanis 19:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Since the ivory bills have been spotted in the wild, shouldn't they be removed from this article?

Record ist still controversial, but I changed the Ivorybill bit to reflect upon this. -- Dysmorodrepanis 19:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prehistoric Birds

I've found there is an article for Prehistoric bird. While it needs some work, I'm going to add a link to it on this page for ease of use (as it stands, I don't see any way to access a list of fossil birds from here). Dinoguy2 18:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

See above for renaming discussion for more on that -- Dysmorodrepanis 19:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Extinct since 1600, earlier extinctions not included?

Are birds that became extinct before AD 1600 not included? The IUCN Red List and the Committee on Recently Extinct Organisms (CREO) use both AD 1500 as starting date. What is the reason for using AD 1600? Pmaas 18:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Yo Peter, good to see you here! I've changed the figure to 1500; since the list already included the Saint Helena taxa it really was that way already except that one number in the intro section. -- Dysmorodrepanis 22:20, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Extinction Dates

Extinction dates are a matter of contention. Rarely one can say when exactly a taxon has gone extinct. For many 18th century Polynesian extinctions, visits by scientists were so irregular and Norway rats probably jumped ship on every one of them that there is a 100-year-plus uncertainty period. I suggest reading this, especially Criterion 3; there should be a unified way what extinction date to give and how precise or vague it should be. I tend towards a more vague approach that could be refined using the "Dodo algorithm" published in Nature 426:245; even without that, narrowing it down to about 30 years or so is generally possible. See the entry on the Virgin Islands Screech Owl for a taxon that was shown to be extinct in 1995, but which may actually have disappeared as soon as 1865 (simply because nobody cared to look for a badly documented, unappealing and obscure taxon). Similarly, the Thick-billed Ground Pigeon (the latest officially confirmed extinction) has probably been gone since the 1940s at least. -- Dysmorodrepanis 19:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Birds of prey subspecies

Hi, not to mean any offense, but I an unable to find any taxonomic reference confirming that these subspecies:

• Korean Falcon, Falco peregrinus pelax (Korea, 1967)
• Little Peregrine Falcon, Falco peregrinus pygmeaus (England, 1866)
• Mexican Californian Condor, Gymnogyps californianus californianus, ([[Mexico, 1909)
• Nevada'sCalifornian Condor Gymnogyps californianus barberus
• Mongolian Golden Eagle, Aquila chrysaetos mongoliae (Mongolia,1944)

are still considered valid. The HBW does not list them, neither does the AOU, Birds of North America/of the Westenr Palaearctic etc. See also here for what reference works are considered the default basis for bird taxonomy on Wikipedia. I am not aware of any new paper reestablishing these populations as valid subspecies; if there is one, please let me know. Thanks. Dysmorodrepanis 01:19, 1 September 2006 (UTC)