Talk:Little Grebe

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synonym dabchick

Contents 1 Link to edit history of merged material 2 Dabchck 3 database 4 removed unclear text

[edit] Link to edit history of merged material

A small water bird with a pointed bill. The birds are predominantly dark above. In breeding plumage, the adult has a rich rufous on the throat extending down onto the flanks. This colour is a dirty brownish grey in non-breeding and juvenile birds. What is of interest in the very young birds is the yellow bill with a slight black tip and black and white streaks on the cheeks and sides of the neck as seen below. This yellow bill will increasingly darken, eventually turning black.

These birds can be found at pretty much any open body of water across most of Southern Africa.

The preceding material is copied from Little Grebe, Tachybaptus ruficollis, where its edit history can be found. I've brought it here and mentioned it, because its content needs to be merged into this article (which is properly named), but there's no elegant way to merge the histories. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:34, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dabchck

Why is 'Dabchick' capitalized?

[edit] database

What does the sentence about "least" mean? should it, perhaps be "at least"? Kdammers 05:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I've merged the text. Dabchick is capped for the same reason as Little Grebe - the agreed convention is to cap species' names, and this is an alternative, and widely used species name. The Birdlife database uses several standard categories for vulnerability. The lowest, where there is no real threat is designated as "least concern" jimfbleak 06:33, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I see that the capping is done in Wik (e.g., in cougar), but it seems like a bad idea to me. In normal English, dabchick, mountain lion, cougar, etc. are not capped. Thus, Wik can be misleading. Where is this policy discussed? Kdammers 03:40, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It is essentially because the usage of general adjectives such as common, blue can be confused with their use in standard names. See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds#Bird_names_and_article_titles|]]. cheers Shyamal 03:53, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Okeh; I understand, but can't we use some other technique to make the distinction, since some animals have capital words in their names and most don't. Thus, in eliminating one proble we have itnroduced another. (As I see it, Wik is not consisten, since 'Human' is not used in the H.s. article (contra, e.g., "Puma.") Kdammers 04:54, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the place to look for consistency (eg Brit/American spelling). The convention is only fully established for birds, and even then there is some latitude when names are given in a non-biology/environment context. Are humans a single species - Neanderthals, Homo erectus etc? If not, shouldn't be capped anyway. jimfbleak 06:10, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] removed unclear text

I'm not sure what the following was referring to (I assume a photo, but I don't know which one). It was originally included under "Behavior":

One Cornish bird interbred with a vagrant Pied-billed Grebe. - IstvanWolf 08:58, 15 November 2007 (UTC)