Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds

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.

Table of contents 1 Title 2 Scope 3 Parentage 4 Descendant Wikiprojects 5 Related Wikiprojects 6 Participants 7 Structure 8 Criteria for inclusion 9 Names and titles: 10 Taxonomy and references 11 Use a taxobox

Title WikiProject Birds

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

Parentage This WikiProject is an offshoot of WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Science[?].

WikiProject Biology[?]

WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Birds

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 Ecoregions, and WikiProject Conservation worldwide.

Participants

• Tannin
• Jimfbleak
• Kingturtle

Structure

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

• Class: Bird
• Order: Penguin, Coraciiformes
• Familiy: 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 Sphenisiformes 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 also need a to be broken down at some stage because of the number of species.

There may be some merit for larger groups in starting from, say, a family page, and then splitting off genus and/or species accounts as the material builds.

Criteria for inclusion

At what level is it worth having a separate Wikipedia entry for a particular bird? Any level you like. If we try to do individual entries 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 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, it's best to combine separate species into a single entry whenever it seems likely that there won't be enough text to make more than a short, unsatisfying stub otherwise. If the entry 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 stub for Archaeopteryx; if an expert on fossil birds comes along and wants to contribute more, all the better.

It is important to link articles up and down at least, so that, say, a family article, like shrike, links back to passerine, and down to species accounts if they exist.

Names and titles:

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

• Peregrine Falcon not Falco peregrinus
• Wandering Albatross not Diomedea exulans
• Splendid Fairy-wren[?] not Malurus splendens

Page 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[?]

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 name of a species is always capitalised. This signals to the reader that we are indicating a particular, exact species. 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.

When you create a new entry for a species, make sure it is correctly capitalised and always create a redirect in the lower-case form. For example, name the entry 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. (See Wikipedia:How to use redirect pages)

Note that capitalisation for species applies to articles about fauna, not to the whole encyclopedia. We do not have the right to insist that contributors who specialise in any of the many other areas covered in the 'pedia (politics, music, sport, and so on) learn about or conform to the conventions of ornithology. If someone writing an entry on a baseball team called the "Christchurch King Penguins" wants to make an in-text link to king penguin[?] then they should be able to do so without having to worry about the details of species capitalisation rules. It is your responsibility to make the lower-case redirect.

Summary of naming guidelines common names:

• The name of a particular species is always captialised: Common Blackbird, Metallic Starling, Emu, Ostrich, Western Marsh Harrier.
• The name of a group of species in not capitalised: thrush family, kingfishers, turtle doves, marsh harriers.
• The hyphenated part of a species name is not capitalised: Red-winged Blackbird, Black-faced Butcherbird, Splendid Fairy-wren.
• Alternative names should be mentioned where appropriate; with bold type in the opening line of the entry 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 names are never capitalised, always italicised, and always preceeded 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 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 (http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/fitzpatrick/docs/roberts) is in preparation. The list is available online here (http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/fitzpatrick/docs/listlink).

• 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 (http://www.birdsaustralia.com.au/hanzab/HANZAB_spp_list.pdf) is available online. (PDF format.)

• The British Ornithologists' Union publishes this list (http://www.bou.org.uk/recbrlst) of British birds. Also see Taxonomic Recommendations for European Birds (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.0019-1019.2001.00026.x/pdf) and Taxonomic recommendations for British birds (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1474-919x.2002.00110.x/pdf) (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 (http://www.oup.co.uk/academic/science/ornithology/bwp/).) 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 (http://www.aou.org/aou/birdlist). The American Birding Association ABA Checklist (http://www.americanbirding.org/checklist/chklst1.htm) is available online.

• For South America, the South American Checklist Committee of the American Ornithologists' Union has a preliminary checklist (http://www.museum.lsu.edu/).

• World lists: ITIS (http://www.itis.usda.gov/), 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 (http://montereybay.com/creagrus/list) tries to strike a balance between the radical and the traditional. Also see his essay on choosing a family listing (http://montereybay.com/creagrus/essay).

• Further suggestions are welcome!

There are also a number of family monographs, such as the Hayman "Shorebirds" and Harrison's "Seabirds", but these are not available on line, and although a mine of information reflect the author's idiosyncracies and soon become dated.

Use a taxobox

Meliphagidae
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Passeriformes Family: Meliphagidae
Genera Anthochaera Plectorhyncha Xanthornyzma Phylidonyris[?] Trichodere Acanthorhynchus[?]

In general, bird entries should have taxobox. This is something we have inherited from the Tree of Life WikiProject. There are many examples there to look at. (The one at right is just an example and leaves quite a few genera out for space resons.)

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)[?]