Talk:List of birds

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Thankyou for the reordering, Jimfbleak. Much better. Tannin 16:11 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you. Unfortunately there is still a great deal to do to make this potentially very useful page worthwhile. It needs much more revision to break it into correctly ordered and named taxonomic groups, preferably with scientific orders added, but what time I have, my priority is (re)writing the bird accounts. jimfbleak 16:35 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings about the new look to the page, Jimfbleak.

  • It is rather daunting now. The scientific names (I suspect) will tend to scare the casual reader off, and the space they consume is non-trivial. It makes it harder for the non-specialist to find things. (Particularly as the sequence of families seems, unless you are already familiar with it, random. And if you are familiar with it, then you probably own several books that you'll resort to before you try Wikipedia anyway.)
  • On the other hand, it's a big improvement just the same, and (I think) the only rational way to try to impose some order on the bewildering variety of bird species.

In short, I have mixed feelings. I don't like it but I think it's needed. On balance, this is the way to go. Maybe, after this takes shape a little more, we can devote some thought to thinking about a way to lay it out such that it's easier for the non-expert to navigate.


A question: what authority are you using for the sequence of orders and families? I know that the blessing/curse of DNA analysis and consequent reclassification is continuing to turn things inside out, but the ordering in the entry at present doesn't seem to be the same as any of the lists I have here. Of course, nearly all my references are to the birds of Australia, New Zealand and/or Antarctica, so they tend to leave out slabs of stuff that isn't relevant over here, and that makes me still more confused!

Is there an on-line listing that you can point me at which we can use to resolve any questionable classifications or orderings? I know that debate and change are constants, but it's probably best to pick a particular authority and simply agree to use that one for now.

Tannin 10:08 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

    • Tannin, I agree with many of the points above, but I'm not sure what the answer is, except that it has to be better than the original random list of a few bird species. I would welcome any suggestions on a single source, given the wide disparity that is beginning to arise from DNA.
    • I've used Birds of the Western Palaearctic for species in that region, but a variety of sources elsewhere. For the time being, I'll add some comments regarding alternative taxonomic arrangements, but I don't think that there is much to be gained by listing full alternative taxonomies, especially as nearly all the links are from the English names, which non-specialists would use.jimfbleak
Mav would probably know, I think this is his field. I'll pop a note on his user page. Tannin

In a little while I'm going to start some fairly major changes to this.

  • For the large Southern Hemisphere flightless types I'll use the current Southern Hemisphere taxonimies. The South African one can be found here and here (unfortunately, it doesn't seem to mention orders, only families). The combined Australian and New Zealand one is HANZAB.
  • Adding a little information about each order: geographic location and approximate number of species

I think I can do this without making the page more difficult to use. If not, well, we can always revert. Tannin 00:53 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

Some random notes:

Sphenisciformes (Antarctic and southern waters; 16 species.) - HANZAB lists 14 species (well, 13 actually, as the Royal Penguin is now reduced to a sub-species) and these are all penguins. Are there any members which are not penguins?

The Phoenicopteridae flamingos I have listed on their own in order Phoenicopteriformes - what is the consensus on these?

I ain't even going to touch the Galliformes!

all penguins. Ithink the flamingos are generally accepted, although I've just read a scary article where a american (of course) gene study links them to the grebes!
You were probably wondering what the point of my question about the penguins was. Well ... last night I read Sphenisciformes (Antarctic and southern waters) and thought it said Antarctic and southern waders. Slip of the eye. Huh? I thought they were all penguins? (I said to myself.) And whatever else you might describe a penguin as, a "wader" it ain't. But, being late at night, and not being very bright, I figured that maybe there were one or two species in the order, not mentioned on my Oz/NZ/Antarctic list, that really were waders, and that (in this brave new DNA world) the penguins had suddenly been grouped with them. (Don't laugh. Any day now, we are going to wake up and discover that hummingbirds are closely related to the ostrich.)
So I thought I better ask on the talk page first before I edited out someone's carefully researched work.
But here's the kicker: guess who wrote that "Antarctic and southern waters" sentence in the first place? Yup. Me.
Tannin

I removed:

  • Ephthianuridae Australian chats which are clearly honeyeaters and part of the Meliphagidae.
  • Acanthizidae Australian warblers which are now lumped with the Pardalotes and form part of the Pardalotidae. The pardalotes may at some time be split off again, in which case the name 'Acanthizidae' will apply to the remainder once again
  • Corvidae crows and jays because it was duplicated
  • Grallinidae mudnest-builders These are now part of the Dicruridae

Added:

At some stage, we need to make a list of alternative, mistaken, or obsolete bird families. Sure, there is no such thing as Ephthianuridae, but a great many texts and web pages will still mention them, so we should have something that shows up in search engines and redirects the reader to the correct place. Tannin

What I've been doing, when I think of it, is to add synonyms to the Article's talk page, and redirect from there. jimfbleak

I have reverted major changes by anon user. Although the changes could be partially justified, to dismiss what is still standard taxonomy for most of the world as "silly" at the very least needs discussion involving the people who actually write the bird articles.

There are literally a couple of thousand taxoboxes by now using the Linnaean classicification - is anon going to change all those? jimfbleak 06:51, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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