Talk:List of New Zealand birds

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[edit] Common names

The Gulls list illustrates the problem of indexing links by common name. In NZ what we call the Black backed gull is called the Kelp Gull elsewhere. The common name `Kelp Gull' is simply not used in NZ - even in the scientific literature. Similarly what we call red-billed gulls are called silver gulls in other places with the name red-billed gull being applied to a different species entirely. The common names of gulls are a bit of a mess.

[edit] Suggested policies (edit to change)

  • native birds only (subject to discussion - what is native?)
  • Maori name first for those who want to use this page to look up the Maori names. (This is a New Zealand page first, and a biology page second.)
  • Include extinct birds, but only those which have become extinct since the arrival of humans (for example the South Island kokako and the moa). We don't want to be delving into the dinosaur fossil record!
  • Subspecies to be indicated by indentation
  • Biological classification in italics.
  • Extinct/critical/endangered etc in bold and coloured. How about
  • Vulnerable
  • Threatened
  • Endangered
  • Critical
  • Extinct

[edit] Format

Common Name (Alternate Common Name, Another Common Name), Scientific name - occurrence status; conservation status

e.g.

    • Chatham Robin (Black Robin), Petroica traversi - endemic; endangered

Occurrence status and conservation status to use a set thesarus of terms.

I'm suggesting, and experimenting, with the format above to try to get something easily-readable and consistent. See Pihoihoi to Popokotea in the article for a sample block. I'm really not sure about the colours for conservation status - seems a bit over the top - like an amateurish web page :-) Will come back for another look later. Nurg 09:38, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion:

I like the idea of this page. Just a couple of comments. There is a litlle bit of inconsistency in some of the Maori/English pairings. For example, [Caspian Tern]] links to Tern, but conversely fantail links to Grey Fantail.
True. I thought it better to provide a link wherever I could find an existing page with useful information. In the case of the fantail there is a page for the species. In the Caspian Tern case there is no specific existing page, but the general Tern page has enough useful information to make it worth linking to.
Gannet I assume is Australian Gannet. As you indicate, what is native needs a bit of thought. Do you mean breeding species? Obviously doesn't refer to endemics, since Caspian Tern has an almost world-wide distribution. Hope you view this as constructive, jimfbleak 06:41 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Yes - although we don't call them AUSTRALIAN gannets in New Zealand ;-).
Hi Hawthorn! It's great to see another contributor to the bird entries - and, what's more, a proper Southern Hemisphere type, not one of those backwards-bathwater people. I think your self-imposed guidelines above are excellent. The "native birds only" thing is, as Jim says, going to be difficult, particularly in the case of recent self-introductions. I think the Silvereye is one of those (but I'd have to check).
Hmmm - I thought they'd been here quite a while. Must check.
The meaning of "native" isn't a problem. It is usually taken (in its broader sense used here) to include self-introduced. Non-native are those introduced by humans. But there is the question of why only native birds. Introduced birds are now birds of NZ too. Perhaps all NZ birds should be included with information on whether they are endemic, indigenous/native (in the narrower sense of breeding in other countries too), migrant, vagrant, introduced. And, yes, the Silvereye self-introduced about 200 years ago - before the welcome swallow but after the pukeko and harrier. Nurg 11:55, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)
NZ page first, biology second. Yes. A good move. My intention is to do something rather similar over on this side of the Tasman with Australian birds when I get around to it one day - after all, we have Australasian birds to do the more formal, biological side of things, and that makes a great deal more sense as so many species are trans-Tasman.
Extinct post-human setlement birds? Absolutely! I aim to do the same with the Australian species (mostly mammals) that were wiped out by humans eventually.
Conservation status. Yes. This is a red-letter item for me. I would really like to develop a Wikipedia-wide system for this, probably with some kind of colour-coding - maybe something like this:
  • Secure
  • Lower Risk
  • Endangered
  • Critically Endangered
  • Extinct
I like this idea - will implement the colour thing next time around. Do you know if there are generally accepted precise definitions for what is what. I find that some sources may list a bird as endangered while others call it threatened or critical. It would be nice to have a standard.
and links to an appropriate page with sets out the official categories and defines them. I talked to Anthere about this a while back, we both thought it was a good idea but neither of us has done anything about it yet. Maybe I'd have done something concrete already but I haven't been able to think of a way to do it neatly - maybe some kind of extension to the taxoboxes?
Great idea
I'll slip in and do some more species accounts from time to time. Right now I'm mostly doing mammals. By the way, you'll find a lot of handy links and resources at WikiProject Birds, including a complete and up-to-date species list for NZ, Oz & Antarctica prepared jointly by the Oz and NZ birding bodies. It's very handy for intimidating Jim with when he comes over all Euro-centric on us.
I've wondered if it might not be a useful thing one day to route all the species links by species name. A given species may be referred to be many common names in different parts of the world. To make matters worse, the same common name may be used in different places to refer to different species. For these reasons linking by common name is a bit of a mess.

It has recently been discovered that what were thought to be different species of Moa was infact their sexual dimorphism. Crusadeonilliteracy 21:30, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Conservation status: Readers will assume that not-labeled means "safe", but several of the unlabeled species are not (particularly Kakapo), so the overall impression is misleading as it stands. Pm67nz 12:15, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] July 2004 copy of discussion from Tree of Life wikiproject

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#List_of_New_Zealand_birds

This seems to contravene several principles of ToL articles

  • it is alphabetical, not taxonomic
  • listing is a mixture of Maori and English, this is English wikipedia, so listing should give English name with Maori alternative (or without -see history of list of Korean birds)
  • many links are incorrect

Any views - I'm reluctant to run amok on this page myself since I don't know the region. jimfbleak 17:54, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've a couple suggestions. In order:

  • Leave it for a little bit. You've listed it on ToLCleanup. Give that a chance to catch someone's eye.
  • Find the authors of some of the birds on the list and see if they can take a whack at it.
  • Run amok. :)

- UtherSRG 01:36, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm .... my 2c worth.

  • Order: yes, taxonomic is probably best, though I'm not too fussed about it.
  • Maori names. I don't think we should force the people of a region to use English names where there is a substantial tradition of using local names. I think the standard names need to be listed as alternatives, but I'm perfectly comfortable with the use of local (in this case Maori) names as well. The actual linked-to articles, of course, must use the proper names, and common sense dictates that we create appropriate redirects from Maori (and other) names. Also, we should remember that many of the proper names are Maori names: kiwi, Kea, Kapapoo, and so on. English has already taken on a substantial number of Maori words, and wil take more on as time goes by. Our overall aim should be to create an article that is usable by all: New Zealanders first, but all other English speakers as well.
  • Wrong links? Err .. I can't find them. I went through List of NZB maybe 6 or 12 months back and sorted out the links, but it's grown a bit since then. Still, a half dozen random clicks didn't thrw up any obvious errors. Can you list the problem ones, Uther? (Or just go ahead and fix them.)

Tannin 02:10, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Not me. I was just giving my input to Jim's query. - UtherSRG

Yeah, I realised that just after I pressed "Save page". For "Uther", read "Jim". Tannin
  • Takapu (Gannet) Sula serrator - I'll go back to this and fix
  • Taranui (Caspian Tern) - I've fixed this
  • Tarapiroe (Black-fronted Tern)

Richard's Pipit although linked correctly, is not shown by the name by which it is known everywhere except presumably NZ. I'm not going to make a big thing of this, it's not even my hemisphere, but I thought I should flag it up. I did think of replacing it with the ITIS listing, but the editing is too difficult for a European. Jim

OK Jim. I started sorting the list. I've left it in worse state than it was when I started, but I think I've made enough of a start that if we chip away at it, we can finish the job before too long. BTW, in working on it, I started to see more examles of the things that you were taking about above. I fixed a few of them, lots more to go. Cheers, Tannin 11:02, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

(Futher discussion moved to Talk:Richard's_Pipit.)

[edit] Number of extinct species

The following text was amended in the article as the count of 49 species does not (now) match the list. Perhaps subspecies were counted too?

"The 49 species marked extinct became extinct subsequent to humans' arrival in New Zealand. Of these, 34 extinctions occurred after the arrival of Maori but before the arrival of Pakeha with 15 further extinctions since." Nurg 05:42, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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