Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds

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WP:BIRD

This is a draft WikiProject. The aim of this project is to set out broad suggestions about how we organize data in the bird articles. In general, these are only suggestions, and you shouldn't feel obligated to follow them.

Contents

[edit] Scope

This WikiProject aims to help organise our rapidly growing collection of articles about birds.

[edit] Parentage

This WikiProject is an offshoot of WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Science.
WikiProject Tree of Life
WikiProject Birds

[edit] Descendant Wikiprojects

No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.

[edit] Related Wikiprojects

It is worth keeping one eye on several Wikiprojects that overlap with this one, including Wikipedia:WikiProject Cetaceans, Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecoregions and Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs.

[edit] Participants

[edit] Wikiproject Birds Userbox

{{User WP Birds Userbox}}

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 This user is a member of
WikiProject Birds



[edit] Structure

Bird articles can be on any level that makes sense in context. Most will be about particular taxa. For example:

In many cases, it makes sense to combine several taxonomic levels in a single article. For example, the order Sphenisciformes contains only one family, Spheniscidae, and all Spheniscidae are penguins, so the one article covers both levels. Taxa which are monotypic on several subsequent levels should get a single article for all of them. Which names are bolded in the taxobox is explained here. Naming the article should use common sense; there is no uniform rule (compare Kagu, Turnagridae and Ichthyornis).

Conversely, sometimes it is better to cover only a part of a taxon: kingfisher deals with three different (but related) families and ignores the other families in the order Coraciiformes.

Some large families such as the hummingbirds will need to be broken down at some stage because of the number of species. To prevent species lists from cluttering up pages, it is often advisable to use a multi-column formatting such as in Bird of paradise.

It may be useful to start with a high-level article, such as a family article, and then split off genus and/or species articles as the material builds.

Create links to articles on the levels immediately higher and lower. An article on a family such as shrikes should link back to the order passerines, and down to genus and/or species articles where they exist.

Do not be too "precise" when listing species and/or genera in taxa which have many of these. Systematics is an ongoing scientific endeavor, and the number of valid species of, for example, hummingbirds, has varied by nearly 10% in the last decades due to new discoveries, changes in taxonomy, and of course different opinions favored by different researchers. For such groups, giving a less precise figure like "320-350" or "over 300" is to be preferred by all means! The work required to verify whether a precise number of species is still current is completely out of proportion with the small gain in informative value supplied to the reader.

Be aware that many genera and families contain recently extinct taxa; in such cases, it is advisable to use the term "living species" when discussing how many of these there are, especially in cases where extinct forms already have separate pages. See Picidae for a good approach when there are only a few, well-known recently extinct forms but many living species, or Booby when things are the other way around.

[edit] Criteria for inclusion

At what level is it worth having a separate Wikipedia article for a particular bird? Any level you like. If we write individual articles for all 9000-odd species, we will be at it for a long time! The simplest (and probably best) rule is to have no rule: if you have the time and energy to write up some particularly obscure subspecies that most people have never even heard of, go to it!

As a general guideline though, combine several species or subspecies into a single article when there isn't enough text to make more than short, unsatisfying stubs otherwise. If the article grows large enough to deserve splitting, that can always be done later.

What about extinct birds? At the very least, we should include birds that have become extinct within historical times—i.e., within the last 5000 years or so (but see below). There seems no obvious reason to exclude any birds: there is already a nice page for Archaeopteryx; if an expert on fossil birds comes along and wants to contribute more, all the better.

As it stands, there is a list of Fossil Birds extinct before Homo sapiens spread across the globe, another list of Later Quaternary Prehistoric Birds which became extinct during the last 30000 years, (mostly) through or "aided" by human interference, but before modern scientific exploration, and of course Extinct birds, which attempts to list all bird taxa extinct after 1500. The first list will benefit from the efforts of the WikiProject Dinosaurs. Species of completely extinct genera on the first list should not be listed there, as the species-level taxonomy of pre-Late Quaternary birds is often very confused and suffering from a small hypodigm. For fossil species of extant genera, they can be worked into the respective genus articles when enough information has accumulated to add a general evolution/systematics section.

It would be desirable to create an article for every taxon on the post-1500 list (or mention extinct ssp. in the respective species article). Short articles for extinct genera of the other two lists would be nice, too. Prehistoric species and subspecies of extant taxa probably do not deserve separate articles (which should keep nobody from creating them, Nēnē-nui is a very nice example).

[edit] Bird names and article titles

In general, use the formal common name for article titles.

Sometimes exceptions need to be made; some individual creatures (usually newly discovered ones) do not yet have a formal common name. Some distinct groups are known only by their scientific name. Dicruridae, for example, is a much better title than monarch flycatchers, flycatchers, fantails, drongos and the Magpie-lark.

The common name of a species is always capitalised to differentiate it from more general terms. The phrase "in Australia there are many Common Starlings" indicates a large number of Sturnus vulgaris. In contrast, the phrase "in Australia there are many common starlings" indicates several different types of starling.

Article title make a redirect from
Blackbird blackbird
White-necked Raven white-necked raven
Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike black-faced cuckoo-shrike
Prairie Warbler prairie warbler

When creating a new article for a species, make sure the title is correctly capitalised and always create a redirect from the uncapitalised form. For example, name the article Bald Eagle but create a redirect to it from bald eagle. See the table at right for more examples. Creating the redirect is not optional.

Note that the convention for capitalisation of names applies primarily to articles about fauna, not to the whole encyclopedia. Contributors to other areas of the 'pedia (politics, music, sport, and so on) cannot be expected to know or conform to the conventions of ornithology. Someone writing on a sports team called the "Christchurch King Penguins" may refer to "king penguins" without worrying about species capitalisation rules. And if they make an in-text link to king penguin, it should be redirected to King Penguin. It is the responsibility of the writer on King Penguins, not the writer on sports, to make the redirect.

Summary of naming guidelines - common names

  • The name of a particular species is always capitalised; Common Blackbird, Metallic Starling, Emu, Ostrich, Western Marsh Harrier.
  • The word immediately following a hyphen in a species name is not capitalised; Red-winged Blackbird, Black-faced Butcherbird, Splendid Fairy-wren.
  • The name of a group of species is not capitalised; birds, thrush family, kingfishers, turtle doves, marsh harriers.
  • Alternative names should be mentioned where appropriate; with bold type in the opening line of the article if they are in wide use, elsewhere in the article (with or without the bold type) if they are less-used. This is usually a matter for individual judgement.

Summary of naming guidelines - scientific names

  • Orders, families and other taxa above genus level are written with an initial capital and in roman (not italic) text: bats belong to the class Chiroptera; rats and mice are members of the family Muridae and the order Rodentia.
  • The names of genera are always italicised and capitalised: Turdus, Falco, Anas.
  • Species epithets are never capitalised, always italicised, and always preceded by either the genus name or an abbreviation of it: Alcedo pusilla or A. pusilla, Cisticola juncidis or C. juncidis.

[edit] Taxonomy and references

This is likely to be the single most difficult part of the project. Not only does bird taxonomy vary significantly from one authority to another, but it is in a state of constant change. There is no single authority to rely on; no one list can claim to be the list.

The de facto standard for Wikipedia bird articles is Handbook of Birds of the World for the northern hemisphere, and the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (ISBN 0195532449) for exclusively southern groups. These should be used for all articles except for those dealing with a country or region, where the appropriate local official list should be used, as in List of North American birds and British birds.

The major official sources include:

  • For Africa Roberts' Birds of Southern Africa has been recognised as the authoritative book on southern Africa's birds since its first publication in 1940. A new edition has been published. The list is available online here.
  • For Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa (i.e. the Western Palearctic), the nine-volume BWP or Birds of the Western Palearctic is considered the standard reference. It is also available as a two-volume concise edition. (See the publisher's site.) BirdGuides has combined the text of BWP, the text and plates of the concise edition, with text from the BWP Update journal, images, video and sound recordings into Birds of the Western Palearctic interactive DVD-ROM. The list does not seem to be available online, however.
  • For North America, the American Ornithologists' Union Check-list of North American Birds is the official source on the taxonomy of birds found in North and Middle America. It is available in both HTML and PDF form here. The American Birding Association ABA Checklist is available online.
  • For South Asia, the most recent species treatment is Rasmussen, P.C. & J. Anderton (2005) Birds of South Asia: The Ripley Guide in two Volumes Lynx Edicions ISBN 8487334679. For common names, the names used in the earlier mentioned work, together with the usage suggested in Inskipp, T., Lindsey N. and W. Duckworth (1996) An Annotated Checklist of Birds of the Oriental Region Oriental Bird Club [1] as well as older local usage in Ali, S. and S. D Ripley (1987) Compact Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan Oxford University Press may be followed.

There are also a number of family monographs (such as the Hayman "Shorebirds" and Harrison's "Seabirds" in the Helm Identification Guides series) but these are not available on line, and although a mine of information reflect the author's idiosyncrasies and soon become dated.

[edit] Online resources

A number of useful free to view online resources exist that are useful in writing bird related articles.

  • SORA Searchable online research archive; This site has decades worth of archives of the following journals The Auk, Condor, Journal of Field Ornithology, North American Bird Bander, Studies in Avian Biology, Pacific Coast Avifauna, and the Wilson Bulletin. Coverage ends around 2000, but still extremely useful. The ability to search all journals or browse exists on the front page.
  • Notornis the journal of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand. Covers New Zealand and the South Pacific.
  • New Zealand Journal of Ecology Often published bird related articles. Like Notornis concerns itself with New Zealand and surrounding areas.
  • Marine Ornitholgy published by the numerous Seabird Research Groups, it is specific but goes back many years.
  • BirdLife International The Data Zone has species accounts for every species, although only threatened species have any detail beyond status and evaluation. But there is still a lot of information to be had there.
  • Authors Names A great source of authors for the taxoboxes.

There is also Birds of North America, Cornell University's massive project collecting information on every Breeding bird in the ABA area. It isn't free, but available for 40 USD a year.

[edit] Use a taxobox

Wikipedia:How to read a taxobox
How to read a taxobox
Torresian Crow
Image of the Torresian Crow.
Image of the Torresian Crow.
Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Corvidae
Genus: Corvus
Species: C. orru
Binomial name
Corvus orru
Bonaparte, 1850
Distribution of the Torresian Crow.
Distribution of the Torresian Crow.

In general, bird articles should have taxoboxes. This is something we have inherited from the Tree of Life WikiProject. There are many examples there to look at.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/taxobox usage for the full details on constructing a taxobox.

Taxoboxes on the bird pages vary quite a bit from one another and could perhaps be standardised more than they are right now. This may or may not be a good thing. Discussion of this is welcome.

There are several example bird taxoboxes, suitable for cut and paste insertion into entries:

[edit] Distribution maps

A good way to show a bird's area of occurrence is to add a distribution map; see the above example on how. Species with tiny areas of occurrence should get larger maps which are displayed thumbnailed.

As for colors, the following are generally accepted as literature standard: yellow for summer only, blue for winter only, green for all-year range; for species that do not migrate, a single color can be used as in the example. At-sea range of birds like albatrosses is usually marked in darker blue. Small islands can be marked with a larger dot. Migration flyways are often indicated with arrows. Areas of irruptive occurrence, such as in crossbill species, can be indicated by colored stippling. It is good to use basic, web-safe colors. If using nonstandard coloration (e.g. Arctic Tern or Silvery Pigeon), it is good to annotate them. Former ranges of extinct birds can be indicated in grey (HBW standard) or red (many other), the former is probably preferable due to unambiguity.

[edit] Tasklist

  • Everyone please check out the newly created bird anatomy article. It may need an expert's touch.
  • Also, a short summary of bird anatomy needs to be created in Bird#Bird_anatomy, as the entire section was cut to create bird anatomy.
  • Evolution of birds

[edit] Images and Photos on commons

I can see that many of you have uploaded a number of photos. I am currently working mostly on wikispecies and trying to fill out the bird section. If you add new bird photos would you be willing to put them on commons so that we can link to them from wikispecies? Thanks so much Open2universe 00:07, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Articles needing attention

[edit] Microformat

Please be aware of the proposed Species microformat, particularly in relation to taxoboxes. Comments welcome on the wiki at that link. Andy Mabbett 11:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of years in birding and ornithology

I've just added List of years in birding and ornithology to the "pages requested" section. Please see the few existing pages for layout. Thank you.

Also, I suggest that year links in birding articles link to one of the above, and not the general year, as happens in other genres - so 2005 not 2005

Andy Mabbett 10:39, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
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