Talk:List of birds

Thankyou for the reordering, Jimfbleak. Much better. Tannin 16:11 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you. Unfortunately there is still a great deal to do to make this potentially very useful page worthwhile. It needs much more revision to break it into correctly ordered and named taxonomic groups, preferably with scientific orders added, but what time I have, my priority is (re)writing the bird accounts. jimfbleak 16:35 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings about the new look to the page, Jimfbleak.

• It is rather daunting now. The scientific names (I suspect) will tend to scare the casual reader off, and the space they consume is non-trivial. It makes it harder for the non-specialist to find things. (Particularly as the sequence of families seems, unless you are already familiar with it, random. And if you are familiar with it, then you probably own several books that you'll resort to before you try Wikipedia anyway.)
• On the other hand, it's a big improvement just the same, and (I think) the only rational way to try to impose some order on the bewildering variety of bird species.

In short, I have mixed feelings. I don't like it but I think it's needed. On balance, this is the way to go. Maybe, after this takes shape a little more, we can devote some thought to thinking about a way to lay it out such that it's easier for the non-expert to navigate.

A question: what authority are you using for the sequence of orders and families? I know that the blessing/curse of DNA analysis and consequent reclassification is continuing to turn things inside out, but the ordering in the entry at present doesn't seem to be the same as any of the lists I have here. Of course, nearly all my references are to the birds of Australia, New Zealand and/or Antarctica, so they tend to leave out slabs of stuff that isn't relevant over here, and that makes me still more confused!

Is there an on-line listing that you can point me at which we can use to resolve any questionable classifications or orderings? I know that debate and change are constants, but it's probably best to pick a particular authority and simply agree to use that one for now.

Tannin 10:08 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

• • Tannin, I agree with many of the points above, but I'm not sure what the answer is, except that it has to be better than the original random list of a few bird species. I would welcome any suggestions on a single source, given the wide disparity that is beginning to arise from DNA.

• • I've used Birds of the Western Palaearctic for species in that region, but a variety of sources elsewhere. For the time being, I'll add some comments regarding alternative taxonomic arrangements, but I don't think that there is much to be gained by listing full alternative taxonomies, especially as nearly all the links are from the English names, which non-specialists would use.jimfbleak

Mav would probably know, I think this is his field. I'll pop a note on his user page. Tannin

---

In a little while I'm going to start some fairly major changes to this.

• For the large Southern Hemisphere flightless types I'll use the current Southern Hemisphere taxonimies. The South African one can be found here and here (unfortunately, it doesn't seem to mention orders, only families). The combined Australian and New Zealand one is HANZAB.

• Adding a little information about each order: geographic location and approximate number of species

I think I can do this without making the page more difficult to use. If not, well, we can always revert. Tannin 00:53 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

---

Some random notes:

Sphenisciformes (Antarctic and southern waters; 16 species.) - HANZAB lists 14 species (well, 13 actually, as the Royal Penguin is now reduced to a sub-species) and these are all penguins. Are there any members which are not penguins?

The Phoenicopteridae flamingos I have listed on their own in order Phoenicopteriformes - what is the consensus on these?

I ain't even going to touch the Galliformes!

all penguins. Ithink the flamingos are generally accepted, although I've just read a scary article where a american (of course) gene study links them to the grebes!

You were probably wondering what the point of my question about the penguins was. Well ... last night I read Sphenisciformes (Antarctic and southern waters) and thought it said Antarctic and southern waders. Slip of the eye. Huh? I thought they were all penguins? (I said to myself.) And whatever else you might describe a penguin as, a "wader" it ain't. But, being late at night, and not being very bright, I figured that maybe there were one or two species in the order, not mentioned on my Oz/NZ/Antarctic list, that really were waders, and that (in this brave new DNA world) the penguins had suddenly been grouped with them. (Don't laugh. Any day now, we are going to wake up and discover that hummingbirds are closely related to the ostrich.)

So I thought I better ask on the talk page first before I edited out someone's carefully researched work.

But here's the kicker: guess who wrote that "Antarctic and southern waters" sentence in the first place? Yup. Me.

Tannin

I removed:

• Ephthianuridae Australian chats which are clearly honeyeaters and part of the Meliphagidae.
• Acanthizidae Australian warblers which are now lumped with the Pardalotes and form part of the Pardalotidae. The pardalotes may at some time be split off again, in which case the name 'Acanthizidae' will apply to the remainder once again
• Corvidae crows and jays because it was duplicated
• Grallinidae mudnest-builders These are now part of the Dicruridae

Added:

• Petroicidae: the Australian robins

At some stage, we need to make a list of alternative, mistaken, or obsolete bird families. Sure, there is no such thing as Ephthianuridae, but a great many texts and web pages will still mention them, so we should have something that shows up in search engines and redirects the reader to the correct place. Tannin

What I've been doing, when I think of it, is to add synonyms to the Article's talk page, and redirect from there. jimfbleak

---

I have reverted major changes by anon user. Although the changes could be partially justified, to dismiss what is still standard taxonomy for most of the world as "silly" at the very least needs discussion involving the people who actually write the bird articles.

There are literally a couple of thousand taxoboxes by now using the Linnaean classicification - is anon going to change all those? jimfbleak 06:51, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Requested move

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was Original mover already Moved the page back, closing proposal. Parsecboy (talk) 15:32, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

List of orders and families of birds → List of birds — Move back to original title. The list was moved to make way for the article List of famous birds by User:UnitedStatesian apparently without any prior discussion. This caused the many links from scientific articles on birds to redirect to that inappropriate page. While "famous" may not be desirable in the name of a title, I'm sure another can be found since this scientific list of bird types should retain the primary title "List of birds". — Dougie WII (talk) 08:06, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the Survey is necessary. I will kick off the reversal of my move. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Taxonomy of birds would be better than either; that's what this article is. It has much more structure than list suggests. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Change name

I don't like how 'List of Birds' redirects to this article as I have no idea what the birds' group name is. I find it hard to find the one I'm searching for, though I find List of birds by common name very useful as they are organised it a more know ay to me.

If its possible, could someone change it?

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

What has happen to this page? Somebody did changes to match resent research although some of them are a bit controversial. Then somebody changed it back and lots of the important information was lost. There were several remarks to clarify the situation for many families and they are gone now. Those changes should be at least discused before doing anything. Now the page is much worse than it used to be. So, what new changes in taxonomy should be included in here and what are so widely percived as possible that there should be at least a mention of it? Who would like to look for the old page as it was couple of months ago? That should be the starting point. I'm not really up to it myself, because my native language is not English as you can see. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.251.119.3 (talk) 23:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Pelicaniformes

I'm no expert, but isn't Pelicaniformes missing from the list? Caeruleancentaur (talk) 23:35, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Did you even try looking it up? If you had, you would probably have discovered your misspelling. — Smjg (talk) 09:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

At the time the question was written (in 2011), Pelecaniformes was missing from the list. The pelecaniform families were included in Ciconiiformes.  —  Jts1882 | talk  12:37, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Paleognathae

The flightless and mostly giant Struthioniformes lack a keeled sternum and are collectively known as ratites. Together with the Tinamiformes, they form the Paleognathae or "old jaws", one of the two superorders recognized within the taxonomic class Aves. This short description of the Paleognathae seems to be outdated, as the Struthioniformes now only contain Ostriches, while Tinamiformes are classed with all the others in Notopalaeognathae. I'm not an expert, but somebody could perhaps rewrite it.193.190.253.144 (talk) 13:48, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

I've updated the content, although it could do with better phrasing. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:03, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

"List of birds on Wikipedia" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect List of birds on Wikipedia. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Regards, SONIC678 17:51, 14 April 2020 (UTC)