Talk:Bird
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(the above heading is just there to force the ToC to the top of the page)
seglea 01:54, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Um... It seems that something of the form "birds have wings" would be a good idea.
Yeah, Ostrich, it seemed that way to me, too. Which is why when I made Bird re-direct to Aves, I copied all the text from Bird. However, for some strange reason, the text wasn't showing up. But the text showed up in the diff on the History. And really weird was when I went to edit the page to the text back in, it was already there! Don't know what was going on, it shows up now. With luck it will stay there.
I just checked on Bug reports, and this looks just like what they're talking about page caching.
Aidan Elliott-McCrea, Friday, May 10, 2002
No mention of birds as pets under Birds & Humans? -- wm
Is the listing of orders in a particular sequence? If so, what is it? It doesn't look familiar. Tannin
- The following orders are still out of sequence. For now, I've stuck them all in immediately above the passerines. Could some kind soul from the Northern Hemisphere slot them in correctly please?
- Order Piciformes (woodpecker and toucan)
- Order Trogoniformes (trogon)
- Order Coliiformes (mousebird)
- Order Gaviiformes (loons or divers)
- Tannin 14:23 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)
The passenger pigeon was popular on the menus? Kingturtle 00:11 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC) Why is the oxpecker/water buffalo relationship explained under Birds & Humans? Kingturtle 00:13 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)
I have been thinking (yes, I know, it's a dangerous occupation, but I can't seem to give it up) that there is a case for splitting the idea of a formal, technical "main bird page" on the one hand, and the more informal, introductory main bird page on the other. What I have in the back of my mind is that this present page bird should be much as it is now, but fine-tuned to be an introduction rather than a comprehensive entry, to be a "start here" page, if you like, and that the arcane details (in particular, the horrors of taxonomy) be consigned to a different page. If so, then the obvious way to do it would be to heep this page pretty much as-is, and put the more formal page at Aves (which is currently just a redirect to here). The taxoboxes would usually link to Aves, and the body text to bird. It would need some heavy-duty link fixing, but nothing that couldn't be done in a couple of hours.
No hurry about this, just an idea that has been flapping around in the back of my head. Worth pondering? Tannin 09:20 May 3, 2003 (UTC)
- I don't think that is a good idea. Aves and birds are exactly the same thing - it is far better to spin off the detail in traditional daughter articles such as Bird evolution, Bird anatomy and physiology etc. But yes, this article should be introductory in nature. --mav
- I need to think a bit more about this-as you say, there is no rush. jimfbleak
Josh asked Why the double list of birds?
Because that's the way that nearly all the articles are arranged, Josh. There simply isn't room in the taxoboxes for common names - not unless we want to wind up with huge taxoboxes that don't leave a lot of room for actual text and pictures. In any case, all too often the common names for groups of creatures don't line up with the orders and families: there are many common names that refer to a little bit of this family and a little bit of some other one. Sometimes they even cross over into different orders!
Originally, I was in favour of including more information in the taxoboxes, and spent quite some time working up a fancy table layout that would accommodate this. Other people working on the birds disagreed with me, however, and so I gave way on the point. As time has gone by, I've become convinced that I was wrong, and that the standard "lean 'n mean" taxoboxes are much the best. In the end, there is often far too much information that ought to go on a list to fit it into a taxobox - information heading in "both directions" if I can put it that way:
- We often want to "zoom in" on extra detail and a more comprehensive listing of common names and alternative names or add other details (such as mentioning that this species is extinct, for example), and this can't be done in a taxobox.
- We also need to "zoom out" and place a given taxon within a context of other relevant taxa - knowledge on its own is useless stuff, it's only when you can place that datum in a context that it becomes meaningful.
Quite a bit of the discussion that led to this arrangement took place on WikiProject Birds and its talk page. Run your eye over that and see what you think. Tannin 04:30 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I think I don't understand why we have the taxoboxes, then. Recall on Talk:Chordate you said that their top half was usually irrelevant, so obviously what value the taxoboxes have derives largely from their bottom half. But here, we find that the bottom half is necessarily redundant, because the same information needs to be copied out in the article proper. If both halves are unnecessary, what purpose does the whole serve? Possibly they're convenient navigational tools - I definitely appreciated them when working on the ciliates - but that was without lists in the articles themselves. I'm not sure I can say those wouldn't work just as well. -- Josh
Something on birds in mythology and symbolism would be good! Is there anything already on the wikipedia in that area? --Sam 10:39 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Tiny, but informative, addable facts to "preening"-sentence:
- Do most birds ever preen each others? Like...chimps who eat each other's lice? :-) I have never seen a crow do that, but I haven never a chimp either in meatspace.
- Do birds sometimes use water (from a pool or river), or even saliva, like cats?
--Menchi 22:05 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
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Main photo
Shouldn't the first photo in the article (the one in the table) be of a bird showing its wings and preferably in flight? Image:Albaasmall.JPG seems like it would be a more representative photo. --mav 02:24, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- Ideally, yes. It (in a perfect world) would also be as representative a bird as possible - i.e., a passerine or (better yet) a near passerine, such as a parrot or kingfisher. Also it should be colourful (for visual appeal), and as crystal-clear as 250-odd pixels can make it. All in all, that adds up to a pretty tight set of criteria and I don't have anything in my collection to satisfy it. I doubt that Arpinstone does either. As I see it, the flycatcher is a temporary placeholder while someone finds (or takes) the perfect shot. Neither it nor the albatross is ideal. I'll not object if anyone wants to replace the flycatcher with the albatross, and I'll keep trying, though kingfishers are very thin on the ground in my part of the world. Tannin
- BTW, over the next day or so, I plan to revise bird for layout: as it stands it has lots of good info but the layout is as ugly as a hat full of ... er whatnames.
- Has anybody asked User:Jimfbleak if he has any pictures that meet the above criteria? RickK 02:52, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- They haven't, but I haven't. Jim
Wood pigeon
- This is the best I can do but I don't think it's what you want. Pity about the strange object in the background, I suppose it's a water sprinkler. Let me know if you want me to put it in the taxobox. If it is wanted I'll have a go at removing the sprinkler in Photoshop.
- Adrian Pingstone 10:41, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- This is the best I can do but I don't think it's what you want. Pity about the strange object in the background, I suppose it's a water sprinkler. Let me know if you want me to put it in the taxobox. If it is wanted I'll have a go at removing the sprinkler in Photoshop.
- I think your criteria are too narrow. We should find just a better picture than the current one, not an ideal. The current picture is also problematic, because it is non-free in Wikipedia-sense. I have no idea whether it qualifies as fair use, I am referring to the rules of Wikipedia Copyright FAQ.
- I find all these images appropriate: Image:CommonMyna.JPG, Image:Female Chaffinch 800.jpg, Image:Common starling in london.jpg, Image:Southern grey shrike.jpg. Pick any that you like, my favourite is the myna. They are better than the Image:Lemon-breasted Flycatcher.jpg, because they are profile images and show the wing(s) and tail.
- By the way, the mental image of a typical bird varies from place to place. I think that gulls and terns look far more typical than parrots. There are several images in Wikipedia showing them flying. But this must be a coastal, European bias... -Hapsiainen 01:22, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
- I chose a starling photo instead of a myna photo, because it isn't so wide, and it has stronger contrasts. -Hapsiainen 00:57, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
no known poisonous bird species
My text about the interesting situation with no known birds being poisonous was deleted soon after I entered it. Why is it not a significant fact about birds, in general, that there is no known species that is poisonous to man? - Bevo 21:16, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
- That isn't what you wrote though. You wrote that they are not known for being poisonous. The stronger statement you have made here on the talk page is more interesting. Morwen 21:20, May 5, 2004 (UTC)
- I'll see what other comments appear here, and then maybe try a rewrite. - Bevo 21:29, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
- I deleted it because there are very few species of any animals that are toxic when eaten, certainly no mammals, birds or reptiles. It would be more distinctive if they were toxic. If you meant venomous, same applies, vast majority are not venomous. The vague reference to an unnamed species is unhelpful, and the comment should be for that species when identified, rather than in a general article about all birds. jimfbleak 05:02, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks for the comments. - Bevo 15:44, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
dolphins
whats with the dolphin picture???? Can i just remove it from birds article?--Zero00 14:50, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
- What Dolphin picture? Morwen 14:55, May 22, 2004 (UTC)
- I think Zero00 is referring to the neat photo of a penguin leaping from the water. I thought this was a dolphin at first too. Robertmacgrogan 00:58, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Capital letters for common names of species - Please!!!
There is a huge discussion on the Wikiproject Tree of Life pages about whether we should use capital initial letters in the common names of species of plants and animals. However, it is (virtually) undisputed that we should always do so for birds, because that is the rule in the technical literature of ornithology. Please don't break that rule on this page of all pages, unless you can persuade everyone else that we should do away with it... and I don't fancy your chances. seglea 01:52, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Sorry about the capitalization thing. I was unaware that this had been the subject of much discussion since I did not see it mentioned on this page. And to me the capitalization seemed inconsistent, and I thought I was regularizing things. My mistake.Robertmacgrogan 16:44, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Unknown species of bird
Could any of you bird enthusiasts help me identify some of the birds in these pictures? Thanks, – Quadell (talk) (help)[[]] 23:00, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
Mating systems and parental care
As a non-expert I can follow the start of this section reasonably well, but get confused and almost totally lost from these sentences onwards (end of second paragraph):
- It is assumed that when such male care is necessary, monogamy will evolve directly with this. It seems strange then that a male’s ability to defend mates and resources relies on his ability to separate himself from parental care.
Ok, monogamy follows from male care. This reduces male's ability to defend mates (against competitors?) and resources (nesting sites?). Is the last sentence accepted by bird experts as true?
Further on there is this about male incubation:
- With the extreme loss of mating opportunities, there is a reduction in the reproductive success among males.
Why would this lead to a reduction? I thought reproductive success meant success at producing an offspring, and not just success at fertlising an ovum, but what good does it do a species (or the male's genes, so to speak) if many ova are fertlised but very few (or none if incubation fails) develop to further pass on their genes?
The remaining paragraphs don't seem to state anything definite, but appear to be like an essay or an academic discussion, and we're left with the last unenlightening sentence:
- For now, until more research is done, we must instead be content to just know it persists.
Sorry if this seems critical, but I honestly didn't get a sense of what the state of knowledge is in this area, but being a nonexpert cannot see how to improve the wording. -Wikibob | Talk 18:39, 2005 Jan 23 (UTC)
This section also needs editing for NPOV, and to discuss nonmonogamy as well. It's known that many apparently monogamous birds are not genetically monogamous; one recent study says as many as 40% of the eggs laid in their study species were fertilized by another male and not the mother's mate. ("Infidelity has its benefits", ScienceNOW 6 April 2005, original study in Proc. Roy. Soc. B) This section seems to be driving toward some particular theory of avian monogamy, and it seems odd that this isn't mentioned.
-Bedawyn (7 April 2005)
Bird bones
The article says birds have hollow bones. This is not true according to this link (http://www-biol.paisley.ac.uk/courses/Tatner/biomedia/units/bird5.htm) , my textbook, my professors. I'm going to edit that part out. -User:132.177.122.113 20:19, Apr 20, 2005
- From your link: "Birds need to be light to aid flight, and their hollow bones reduce skeletal mass without sacrificing strength." You didn't understand the text. -Hapsiainen 21:13, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
- Heres another one. I don't think that you understood it.
- Their bones contain marrow and support structures.
- Then you could write more about it under "Other anatomy". People were suspicious when you removed text. I don't think that word hollow is misleading. -Hapsiainen 11:21, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)