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Birds WikiProject

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The aim of this WikiProject is to set out broad suggestions about how we organize data articles about birds and related topics. In general, these are only suggestions, and you shouldn't feel obliged to follow them.

Contents 1 Scope 2 Parentage 3 Related Wikiprojects 4 Participants 4.1 Active 4.2 Inactive 5 Featured and Good Content 5.1 Featured topic 5.2 Featured Articles (54) 5.2.1 Featured Article candidates 5.3 Good Articles (39) 5.4 Featured Lists (17) 5.4.1 Featured List candidates 5.5 Featured Pictures 5.6 Featured Sounds 5.7 FA/GA help 6 Spoken articles 7 Wikiproject Birds Userbox 8 Bird names and article titles 8.1 Regional lists 8.2 Article sections 9 Taxonomy and references 9.1 Online resources 10 Use a taxobox 10.1 Distribution maps 11 Other infoboxes 12 Tasklist 12.1 Species lists with redlinks 12.2 Bird families with stub articles 12.3 Standing list of articles with several images but little text 12.4 Standing list of articles with quality pictorial content 12.5 Former Featured Articles 12.6 Former Good Articles 12.7 Groups of articles heading towards featured topic (FT) 13 See also 14 Reference

[edit] Scope

This WikiProject aims to help organise our rapidly growing collection of articles about birds. Included in its scope are articles for all known species, genera, families, and orders of birds (both extant and extinct), as well as articles relating to bird anatomy, physiology, evolution, behaviours, diseases and parasites. Also included are articles relating to the study (ornithology) and the keeping (aviculture) of birds, articles on ornithological organisations, biographies of notable ornithologists and their works, and lists of birds found in various human-defined areas (i.e. countries, states/provinces, counties, etc.).

[edit] Parentage

This WikiProject is an offshoot of WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Biology.

WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Animals

(WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles, and then

WikiProject Dinosaurs, if you're a cladist)

WikiProject Birds

There are no descendant WikiProjects at this time.

[edit] Related Wikiprojects

It is worth keeping one eye on several Wikiprojects that are related, including Wikipedia:WikiProject Agriculture, Wikipedia:WikiProject Cetaceans, Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecoregions and Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs.

See also Wikiproject Birds at Wikimedia Commons.

[edit] Participants

[edit] Active

[edit] Inactive

[edit] Featured and Good Content

[edit] Featured topic

edit | Topic discussion | Book 3 articles Chough
Red-billed Chough Alpine Chough

[edit] Featured Articles (54)

[edit] Featured Article candidates

none currently

[edit] Good Articles (39)

[edit] Featured Lists (17)

[edit] Featured List candidates

[edit] Featured Pictures

[edit] Featured Sounds

[edit] FA/GA help

The following are available to offer assistance with improving articles towards Good Article and Featured Article standard. Casliber · Jimfbleak (not graphics or maps) · MeegsC · Sabine's Sunbird . Shyamal (SVG illustrations) · SP-KP

[edit] Spoken articles

The list of spoken articles concerning WikiProject Bird is found here.

[edit] Wikiproject Birds Userbox

{{User WP Birds Userbox}}

results in:

[edit] Bird names and article titles

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

• Peregrine Falcon not Falco peregrinus
• Wandering Albatross not Diomedea exulans
• Splendid Fairywren not Malurus splendens

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. Artamidae, for example, is a much better title than Woodswallows, butcherbirds, currawongs and the Australian Magpie.

The common name of a species is always capitalised to differentiate it from more general terms.^[1] 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. This topic has been discussed often before and discussions may be found in the archives. (Examples: 10-1, 7-1, 7-2, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3). There is also a global committee set up as part of the International Ornithological Congress (http://www.worldbirdnames.org/) which has tried to standardize the English names of birds. (http://www.worldbirdnames.org/principles.html)

Article title	make a redirect from
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 birds, not to the whole encyclopedia. Contributors to other areas of the 'pedia (botany, 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.

Also, this convention does not necessarily apply to articles on taxa other than birds.

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: birds belong to the class Aves; ducks are members of the family Anatidae and the order Anseriformes.
• 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 a one-letter abbreviation of it: Alcedo pusilla or A. pusilla, Cisticola juncidis or C. juncidis. The abbreviation is used only when it is unambiguous in the context of the article.

[edit] Regional lists

It is recommended that regional lists are named as List of birds of _REGION_ rather than to use List of _REGION_ADJECTIVE_ birds for the sake of consistency.

[edit] Article sections

Most of the bird species articles have a common structure which include various combinations of the following:

• Identification or Description
• Taxonomy and systematics
• Distribution and habitat
• Behaviour and ecology
  • Breeding
  • Food and feeding
  • Threats or Survival
• In culture or Relationship to humans
• Status

Additional sections may be included to cover aspects that are particularly interesting or well studied in that species.

[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 preferred standard for common bird names is the IOC World Bird List (IOC) of the IOC (http://www.worldbirdnames.org). We are in the process of moving to this standard, and changes in order to conform to it need to be discussed individually (or in small groups when appropriate). Controversial moves need to be listed here and at WP:RM. This should be used for all articles except those where consensus decided otherwise and 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. Thus the article on Buteogallus anthracinus is called Common Black Hawk, following IOC, but in List of birds in Canada and the United States this species is called Common Black-Hawk, following the American Ornithologists' Union

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 Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and the Southern Ocean: The 7 volume HANZAB (ISBN 0195532449) is the standard reference. The HANZAB species list (Vol. 1 - 6 updated June 2003 with Vol. 7, 2006 appended) is available online. (PDF format.)

• The British Ornithologists' Union publishes this list of British birds. Also see Taxonomic Recommendations for European Birds and Taxonomic recommendations for British birds (both in PDF format).

• 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. See also Howell and Webb's A guide to the birds of Mexico and northern Central America

• For South America, the South American Checklist Committee of the American Ornithologists' Union has a preliminary checklist.

• World lists: ITIS, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System, offers a complete but idiosyncratic classification. The radical Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy has been very influential. Don Roberson's Bird families of the world tries to strike a balance between the radical and the traditional. Also see his essay on choosing a family listing. Other major world lists are The Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World by James F. Clements, and The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World edited by Edward C. Dickinson. The species-level taxonomy of both these are available online at avibase.

• 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.
• Birds of the World: Recommended English Names Frank Gill & Minturn Wright on behalf of the International Ornithological Congress http://www.worldbirdnames.org

• Further suggestions are welcome!

There are also a number of family monographs (such as the Hayman "Shorebirds" and Harrison's "Seabirds" in the Helm Identification Guides series); some are available on line at Amazon using the Search Inside feature (which requires a free membership in Amazon). Although a mine of information, these books reflect the authors' 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:

Referencing (free scientific articles from ornithological journals etc.)

• FreeFullText Alphabetical list of scientific journals with free full-text articles.
• Ornithological books online by Tommy Tyrberg
• SORA Searchable online research archive, University of New Mexico. This site has decades worth of archives of the American ornithology journals, such as Auk, Condor, Journal of Field Ornithology, Ornitologia Neotropical, Studies in Avian Biology Pacific Coast Avifauna, and the Wilson Bulletin. Coverage ends around 2000, but still extremely useful. The ability to search almost all journals and browse issues exists on the front page.
• Royal Society of New Zealand Free archive of several interesting journals until 2004. Link to Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand archive 1868-1961.
• PALMM Textual Collections a State University of Florida project. Several monographs available via All Collections search, such as Pierce Brodkorb's "Catalogue of Fossil Birds".
• Forktail Oriental Bird Club journal. Deals with South, East and Southeast Asia and surroundings. Several complete issues available.
• New Zealand Journal of Ecology Often publishes bird-related articles. Like Notornis concerns itself with New Zealand and surrounding areas.
• Marine Ornithology published by the numerous Seabird Research Groups, it is specific but goes back many years.
• Notornis the journal of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand. Covers New Zealand and the South Pacific.
• Ornithological Worldwide Literature Searchable reference database. Successor to Recent Ornithological Literature; no actual articles.
• Birds of North America, Cornell University's massive project collecting information on all bird species breeding in the ABA area. It isn't free, but available for 40 USD a year. Access is sometimes available via university libraries.
• Malimbus, The Journal of the West African Ornithological Society; as well as the even older Bulletin of the Nigerian Ornithologists' Society. Mostly covers bird distribution in sites across the area, but also notes on behaviour and ecology of obscure birds from a little studied part of the world. The Journal is bilingual and several articles are in French.
• Biodiversity Heritage Library Project, a digitized “biodiversity commons" from the collections of libraries, museum, and research institutions; see also Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Conservation status

• 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.

Taxonomy

• Zoonomen A great source of authors for the taxoboxes.
• Index Animalium A major source for Zoonomen, deals with early species names only.
• International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.
• Nomenclator Zoologicus Extensive information on genus names.
• Classical Word Roots and Combining Forms For etymology of taxa.

Images

• Flickr Field Guide: Birds of the World. This can be used in External links, if no photo is available in internal sources (Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons). Identity of rare birds probably needs to be checked.

Miscellaneous

• CRC Handbook of Avian Body Masses is searchable at Amazon (as of July 28, 2007).
• Whose Bird?: Common Bird Names and the People They Commemorate is searchable at Amazon (as of July 28, 2007).
• Lists of animals and birds in ISIS participating zoos. Helps to identify a bird from a photograph labeled with a zoo, but not a species.

[edit] Use a taxobox

Torresian Crow
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.

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:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (family taxobox example with picture)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (genus taxobox example)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (species taxobox example)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (species taxobox with subspecies example)

[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, for example by the Handbook of Birds of the World:

• yellow for summer only
• (dark) 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 or lighter blue. Small islands can be marked with a larger dot and/or shown magnified in inserts. Migration flyways are often indicated with arrows. Areas of irruptive occurrence- more regular and plentiful than casual vagrancy, 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 important to annotate them. Former ranges of extinct birds can be indicated in dark grey (HBW standard) or red (many other), the former is probably preferable due to unambiguity.

The "HBW standard" colors have one major advantage: they can also, due to differences in brightness, be distinguished by almost all people with some sort of color blindness.

[edit] Other infoboxes

• {{Infobox Book}}
• {{Infobox Journal}}
• {{Infobox Park}} - for nature reserves

[edit] Tasklist

• Bird evolution
• Check the country lists
• Add {{Infobox Park}} to articles about nature reserves
• Most genus articles lack a genus authority.

[edit] Species lists with redlinks

These are mainly missing redirects. Synonyms should be also added in the species' taxobox.

• Sibley-Monroe checklist 14
• Sibley-Monroe checklist 15

[edit] Bird families with stub articles

• Bring following articles up to start class:

[edit] Standing list of articles with several images but little text

Here is a list of short articles which have had images added and could benefit being beefed up with text to balance the image content. Please help if you can. Also, all are potentially easy DYK noms (hint hint) :) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:44, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

• Bourke's Parrot
• Diamond Firetail
• Dusky Moorhen
• Mangrove Pitta
• Masked Crimson Tanager
• Mulga Parrot
• Pied Butcherbird
• Rufous Fantail
• Sacred Kingfisher
• Scarlet-chested Parrot
• Sociable Weaver
• White-headed Buffalo-weaver

[edit] Standing list of articles with quality pictorial content

Here is a list of articles with either a Featured Picture, or a variety of pictures available, such as chicks, eggs, variant colour forms etc, which would be really done justice by a larger article.

Adelie Penguin African Grey Parrot African Penguin American Avocet Ara (genus) Barred Owl Black-chinned Hummingbird Black-headed Gull Blue-footed Booby Blue Jay Brahminy Kite Budgerigar Channel-billed Toucan Chestnut-mandibled Toucan Chinstrap Penguin Common Tern Double-crested Cormorant Dunlin Eclectus Parrot Eurasian Oystercatcher Galah Gang-gang Cockatoo Glossopsitta Great Frigatebird Greylag Goose Gull Horned Parakeet

Humboldt Penguin Rose-ringed Parakeet Killdeer King Penguin Lesser Yellowlegs Long-billed Corella Lovebird Magellanic Penguin Pacific Koel Prothonotary Warbler Red-crested Pochard Red-footed Booby Red-headed Woodpecker Red-whiskered Bulbul Regent Bowerbird Restless Flycatcher Richard's Pipit Ring-billed Gull Rosella Sarus Crane Silver Gull Snow Goose Striated Pardalote Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Takahē Von der Decken's Hornbill Vulture

[edit] Former Featured Articles

• Brolga

[edit] Former Good Articles

• Crimson-collared Tanager
• Ivory-billed Woodpecker

[edit] Groups of articles heading towards featured topic (FT)

• Procellariiformes order: 5 articles - Albatross (FA), Procellariidae (FA), Storm-petrel (GA), Procellariiformes (B), and Diving-petrel (start)
• Malurus genus: 13 articles - there are six FAs out of 12 species pages and one genus page
• New World vulture family: 9 articles - New World vulture (B), American Black Vulture (FA), King Vulture (FA), Andean Condor (FA), California Condor (FA), Greater Yellow-headed Vulture (GA), Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture (GA), Turkey Vulture (FA), and Cathartes (Start)

[edit] See also

• Page view statistics for top 12% of WikiProject Birds (via Mr.Z-bot October 2008)
• Page hit statistics for articles of the WikiProject Birds (last updated 2008-11-19)

[edit] Reference

Main list of WikiProjects

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