Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds
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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 |
Title
WikiProject Birds
Scope
This WikiProject aims to help organise our rapidly growing collection of articles about birds.
Parentage
This WikiProject is an offshoot of WikiProject Tree of Life
- WikiProject Science.
- WikiProject Tree of Life
- WikiProject Birds
- WikiProject Tree of Life
Descendant Wikiprojects
No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.
Related Wikiprojects
It is worth keeping one eye on several Wikiprojects that overlap with this one, including Wikipedia:WikiProject Cetaceans, Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecoregions, and WikiProject Conservation worldwide.
Participants
- Tannin
- Jimfbleak
- Kingturtle
- Shyamal
- UtherSRG
- DanielCD
- Open2universe
- Smallweed
- Pandion_auk
- Miwasatoshi
- Goldfinger820
- Sabine's Sunbird
- JerryFriedman
- Aerobird
- Dsmdgold
- Joelito
- KimvdLinde
Structure
Bird articles can be on any level that makes sense in context. Most will be about particular taxa. For example:
- Class: Bird
- Order: Penguin, Coraciiformes
- Family: Cacatuidae, Shrike
- Genus: Emu, Kookaburra
- Species: Blue Crane, House Sparrow
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.
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.
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 species articles where they exist.
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. 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.
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 Fairy-wren 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. 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 |
|---|---|
| Common Blackbird | common 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 in not capitalised: 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.
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 is in preparation. The list is available online here.
- For Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and the Southern Ocean: HANZAB, the 7 volume Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (ISBN 0195532449) is the standard reference. The HANZAB species list 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, 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.) 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 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.
- 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.
- 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) but these are not available on line, and although a mine of information reflect the author's idiosyncrasies and soon become dated.
Use a taxobox
| Torresian Crow{{#if:{{{status|}}}| {{#switch:{{{status}}}
| se|SECURE|Secure|secure=Conservation status: Secure | dom|DOMESTICATED|Domesticated|domesticated=Conservation status: Domesticated | data|DD|DATA=Conservation status: Data deficient | lr=Conservation status: Lower risk | lc|LR/LC|LR/lc|lr/lc|LRLC|LRlc|lrlc=Conservation status: Lower risk (lc) | LR/nt|lr/nt|LRNT|LRnt|lrnt|NT|nt=Conservation status: Lower risk (nt) | LR/cd|lr/cd|LRCD|LRcd|lrcd=Conservation status: Lower risk (cd) | vu=Conservation status: Vulnerable | en=Conservation status: Endangered | cr=Conservation status: Critical | ew=Conservation status: Extinct in the wild | ex|EXTINCT|Extinct|extinct=Conservation status: Extinct{{#if:{{{extinct|}}}| ({{{extinct}}}) }} | Fossil|fossil=Conservation status: Fossil | pre=Conservation status: Prehistoric | Text|TEXT=Conservation status: See text | {{{status}}} }}}}Template:Subtext}|contents=Fossil range: {{{fossil_range|}}} }} |
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In general, bird articles should have taxobox. 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 (order taxobox example)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (order taxobox example with picture)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (family taxobox example)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (family taxobox example with picture)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (genus taxobox example)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (genus taxobox example with picture)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (species taxobox example)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (species taxobox example with picture)
Tasklist
None listed at the moment
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)it:Wikipedia:Progetto Forme di vita/Uccelli