Isee back in 2016 someone deleted Categories: Birds of...(African countries)but just for the African countries, nowhere else. Long term project is to try to restore them in some fashion....Pvmoutside (talk) 11:06, 17 July 2023

Can we identify the bird in c:Category:Unidentified taxidermied Falco, Stromness Museum? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:20, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: would help to have measurements of culmen, wing, tail and tarsus ... Shyamal (talk) 14:46, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I have to contact the museum about something else shortly; I'll take the opportunity to ask. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:54, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

It looks pretty small, perhaps a juvenile of something like red-footed falcon or kestrel? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:07, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Adding to Shyamal's information request, I am interested in clear photographs of the breast plumage and tail feathers (dorsal and ventral). Collection locality would be helpful if available. If collected in North America, this appears much like a Falco mexicanus for the light superorbital and undereye giving a light-framed eye appearance. There appears to be dense dark patterning on the flanks which is not clearly visible, but may also support F. mexicanus. If non-American in locality, perhaps consider Hierofalcons such as Falco cherrug. Roboraptor2 (talk) 23:14, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Since the Handbook of the Birds of the World as a handbook has been put online as the well-maintained Birds of the World (albeit with a subscription access model), is it a fair resource to use regularly for habitat, diet, etc. behavior? I was considering making a template for it, e.g., "Template:BOW" that would autofill the website information (https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/******/1.0/introduction) and just request a title and optional author and date information. Reconrabbit 23:36, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I have used BOW as the main source for writing almost 1700 species' pages supplemented by info from field guides and whatever else I can find. (South and Central American and a few Caribbean species - example here: Dusky-throated antshrike) I can't tell what the result of using the template would look like. Would it copy the BOW intro into the Wikipedia page? That's pretty close to unacceptable plagiarism even if surrounded by quotes. How would the citation work? Craigthebirder (talk) 00:04, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Considering that the BOW pages each have an individual DOI, I would need a lot more template/metadata knowledge to put something together that could just pull all the information if it was fed a title and/or URL. Just thought it would be a useful addition, and hadn't seen it mentioned before, but it's beyond my capabilities for now. Thanks for your input.

As for what the template would look like - I was just anticipating some kind of easier-to-use citation to insert that worked like a combination of techniques used to create Template:GoldBookRef and Template:Sigma-Aldrich to generate a citation with accurate URL and DOI based on some other parameters. Reconrabbit 00:20, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I would find this super useful. Can you do a template where we just need to enter one parameter (e.g., the title of the BoW page) and the full citation including authors and doi and so on is pulled automatically? Can you also add an additional optional parameter for the chapter (I mean, many BoW accounts are split into multiple subpages like "Identification", "Breeding" and so on, and it would be nice to be able to specify those easily). Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:48, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I've created a template to do something like this at Template:BoW. I'm still a template novice, so it won't give any errors right now, but the "required" parameters are "title" and "file". Title is the name of the page, and "file" is the id that the doi/url uses. Accepted parameters are "authors", "year", "title", "chapter", "file", and "accessdate". Still working on documentation.

Here's an example: {{BoW|title=Mourning Dove ''Zenaida macroura'' Version 1.0|file=moudov.01|authors=Otis, D. L., J. H. Schulz, D. Miller, R. E. Mirarchi, and T. S. Baskett|year=2020|accessdate=February 25, 2024}}

Which produces: Otis, D. L., J. H. Schulz, D. Miller, R. E. Mirarchi, and T. S. Baskett (2020). Mourning Dove Zenaida macroura Version 1.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, B. K. Keeney, P. G. Rodewald, and T. S. Schulenberg, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. doi:10.2173/bow.moudov.01 Retrieved on February 25, 2024.

Let me know what you think. I do realize that this is in most cases slower than just switching to visual editor, putting in the DOI for a page to the automatic citation tool, and using that, but this method creates a "cite web" template with the editors listed instead of a "cite journal". Reconrabbit 02:51, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

So it can autocomplete all parameters based on the ID except for the title? Just out of interest, why is that, why is title completion not possible? My only other suggestion is to rename "file" into "id". Because that's what it is, "file" can be anything and is really not obvious. Jens Lallensack (talk) 06:48, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

It can't really autocomplete anything, it just inserts text into a citation that is common to all BoW pages. I didn't use "id" because I wasn't sure if it was possible to use that particular string. Jts1882 has a better solution below. Reconrabbit 19:09, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

You can use {{BioRef|BOW}}. See Template:BioRef#Birds for examples. You can give it a |title= and |url= or |title= and |id=to generate a basic citation. The template wraps {{cite web}} so you can use any of the CS1/CS2 parameters, e.g. for adding the author parameters, version, etc. Perhaps the easiest is to use the parameter |citation= which parses the citation given on the BOW page (just copy and paste it). I can add other options if required. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:57, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, thank you! Much better integration than whatever I was trying to do. Reconrabbit 19:08, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I like the option with just copying the recommended citation from the BOW page, and have the template parsing it. Will definitely use that in the future. Thanks. Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:17, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

The {{BioRef}} is a general one handling a variety of sources handled by a module. Usually I make more intuitively named templates for particular sources (e.g. {{cite mdd}}, {{Catalog of Fishes}}). I was thinking of {{Cite BOW}} but we could use {{BoW}} if that is preferred. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:57, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

If the template is going to generate something that can be read with WP:COINS then {{Cite BOW}} would be more appropriate than {{BoW}} which just generates a plain text citation. Reconrabbit 17:11, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I'd prefer {{Cite BOW}} as it makes the purpose of template clearer, and is consistent with widely used templates such as {{Cite web}} and {{Cite book}}. However, that is inconsistent with most of the templates in Category:Biology source templates. But there is also an issue raised at Template talk:PLANTS#PLANTS template used for Sfn causes "Harv and Sfn no-target errors", that was solved by creating redirects with "Cite" (I don't really understand what was going on there). Plantdrew (talk) 21:43, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I'll create {{Cite BOW}} later today. As it uses {{Cite web}} it should generate the COINS data correctly. The |citation= option splits the authors into |lastn= and |firstn= and these are passed to cite web. I might look at a substitution option so the author parameters appear in the template call in the page wikitext.

That sfn error is strange and the fix stranger. I think the fix is due to the use of a redirect rather than including cite in the template name, although I don't understand it either way. {{Cite BOW}} will handle all the CS1/CS2 parameters so you can use |ref=Anchor, |mode=cs2, etc for customising the citations. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:54, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I've created the template at {{Cite BOW}}. The |citation= option may still need tweaking. Parsing the authors and editors needs to take account of one, two and three author/editor cases. I think editor is now OK, but I haven't checked two authors. There may be other odd cases where the format of the citation is slightly different. Incidentally, I don't like the position of the editors in the output (before the title), but that is a CS1/CS2 decision. —  Jts1882 | talk  11:42, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Nice! I just tested the |citation= option with a few examples, and can't spot any issues. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 12:01, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts. This template going to be a great help since so much time is spent writing out citation parameters. Reconrabbit 14:34, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Tangentially related: is there no article on Birds of the World in its current form? I'm not even seeing reference to it on Cornell Lab of Ornithology or Handbook of the Birds of the World. Reconrabbit 14:50, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

It's probably notable, but very niche, so there aren't any non-primary sources that could be used for it. It's technically a journal I guess, so maybe WP:NJOURNALS could be used? AryKun (talk) 15:02, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

It's cited in plenty of articles on checklists and has an article in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology about it, at least I think that's what this is about - can't read the full text right now . I've got Draft:Birds of the World right now. Reconrabbit 15:47, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the article in Wilson's is about the book, The Complete Birds of the World. I'm fairly sure independent references can be found to establish notability, although one option is to have a section in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. However, eBird has an article (note the website infobox) and other taxonomic databases have articles (e.g. Reptile Database, ASW6, POWO, WFO) so it shouldn't be too controversial. —  Jts1882 | talk  16:29, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Re your draft: maybe a mention of the free parts of the BOW? For instance, the Key to scientific names, an etymological database (no subscription is needed) and a huge resource with its 40,000 items with information on the meaning of all scientific bird genera names and epithets... - Kweetal nl (talk) 19:32, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Good idea! It ties into an article I just translated, James A. Jobling. Reconrabbit 20:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

There should also be some mention of incorporating content from HBW Alive. The BOW Source Content has some information on sources drawn upon to create the online BOW. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:06, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

We seem to have two articles about the the kagu, Rhynochetos jubatus.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagu

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhynochetos

Should we combine them?

- 189.122.84.88 (talk) 04:49, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

They were historically separate because some papers argued that there was an extinct species, Rhynochetos orarius, but most recent papers argue that this species is a synonym of the living Kagu. I would support merging the genus and the extinct species into the main Kagu article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 05:06, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

In that case, the extinct Lowland kagu should be merged in with them. I don't think we ever have multiple species articles without a genus article. FunkMonk (talk) 08:38, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

That was exactly what my comment was proposing. Sorry for not being more clear Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh yes, I guess since you linked the binomial instead of the article title, and I was half focused on work, made it more confusing. FunkMonk (talk) 17:08, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I produced 11,000+ wikipedia scientific-name-urls with the 11,000+ scientific names from IOC 14.1, and for each, on the page that wikipedia sent back, I checked the name and authority. The ones that differ are in this list. There are 23 left.

The results are here: IOC - enwiki backlog. There seems to be a small backlog; maybe this helps to get these updated. Feel free to update any fixes on that page.

(sometimes just the redirect is wrong/obsolete, I think.)

Hope this helps - Kweetal nl (talk) 08:13, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia now has very stubby articles for Tooth-billed tanager and Red tanager that were split out from Hepatic tanager (Piranga hepatica). The Hepatic tanager article is kind of a mess now. The habitat section calls it "Brick red cardinal" and is sourced to a Cornell site that recognizes Piranga lutea in a broad sense as the hepatic tanager. The description section has an unsourced paragraph that calls it "Brick-red tangerine" (and the previous paragraph has a reference to a different Cornell site that refers to the species having a range from the United States to Argentina). I'm not sure which, if any, of the information in the hepatic tanager article actually pertains to the narrowly circumscribed species.

Then there are the redirects: Lowland Hepatic-tanager, Northern Hepatic-tanager, Highland Hepatic-tanager, Piranga haemalea, Blood-red Tanager and Blood-red tanager. Where should those go? Plantdrew (talk) 01:37, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

All of it seems to refer to hepatic s. s., All About Birds tends to focus on the North American side of things because that's what its audience is and the other sources are either range-neutral (the name) or talk about NA (the diet in Mexico). The description is unsourced, but it seems accurate enough for hepatic s. s. and I'm inclined to believe it refers to that. I'm not sure about those common names, but they seem to be for ssp/ssp clusters and should presumably be redirected to which ever sp got that particular ssp. AryKun (talk) 03:31, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Birds of the World (Cornell) doesn't recognise the three species but has three species groups, whose subspecies correspond to the IOC species.

• Hepatic Tanager (Northern) [hepatica Group] = IOC Hepatic tanager (P. hepatica) NA, MA : w USA to Nicaragua
• Hepatic Tanager (Highland) [lutea Group] = IOC Tooth-billed tanager (P. lutea) MA, SA : Costa Rica to Bolivia
• Hepatic Tanager (Lowland) [flava Group] = IOC Red Tanager (P. flava) SA : s Guyana through e Brazil to Argentina

That helps with the first three redirects. P. haemalea is part of the lutea group. The blood-red tanager redirects would seems to point to the red tanagerr, at least if the names are logical, but that isn't always strictly so. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:57, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Changed the the highland and lowland redirects to the proper targets in case anyone wants to know. AryKun (talk) 07:05, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufous-capped_antthrush currently says

The exact phylogeny of the rufous-capped antthrush is poorly understood, however, an estimated phylogeny was constructed in 1983 by Sibley and Ahlquist by comparing sixteen tracer-species through DNA-DNA hybridization. These results elude that they are Passeriformes coming from the phylum Chordata.

Can somebody please take a look at that? It can hardly be necessary to mention that these birds are members of Chordata, not can it have been necessary to use DNA-DNA hybridization to establish that fact.

- 189.122.84.88 (talk) 06:27, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Removed the sentence, not particularly necessary to mention Passeriformes either since the position of Formicariidae within Passeriformes isn't to my knowledge particularly controversial. AryKun (talk) 07:03, 28 April 2024 (UTC)