Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds

This is a draft WikiProject. For the time being, feel free to edit any of it. Later, when a consensus emerges emerges, it might be wise to discuss major changes before implementing them, but for now, go right ahead and make bold edits.

The aim of this project is to set out broad suggestions about how we organize data in the bird articles. These are only suggestions, and you shouldn't feel at all obligated to follow them.

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

Structure

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

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.

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 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.

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: