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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Coginsys (talk | contribs) at 08:40, 26 March 2013 (→Common Starling). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Common Starling

Common Starling (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Jimfbleak, Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:02, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because Jim and I have been working on it since the beginning of the year and we think we have polished it up nicely to FA standard. We await your views, or as Jim succinctly put it, "... we'll throw it to the wolves". Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:02, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

SPICY NOTE BY COG -- THIS IS BORING; MAKES ME YAWN -- MAYBE FIX? Coginsys (talk)
Comments Good. Some observations before support:
  • Common Starling (species), starling (family). Yes Brits may use a capitalised Starling to denote the species but this is Wikipedia and we acknowledge more than one species! I've fixed a few instances of this, but you need to check the whole thing carefully, for example at the bottom of voice I found this "When a flock of Starlings is flying together,"
  • The capitalisation of bird names is difficult in articles like this. Where "Starling" is used it is usually to avoid repeating "Common Starling" excessively but it is still referring to the species rather than starlings in general. Do I understand that you think it should then be "starling"? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:25, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The summer breeding map colours are very hard to distinguish.
  • The feeding technique where the starling shoves its bill into the ground and opens it is called prying in taxonomy and probing in feeding.
  • The bit about the lining of the nest with herbs is way more interesting than the rather perfunctory treatment it gets here, check the abstract. Olfaction in birds is a pretty big deal.
  • Gleaning - I'm not sure that word means what you think it means.
  • Duplication - you repeat the information about the Azores birds raiding terns, and the conservation impact/
  • no mention of this species consuming parasites off large mammals, or the fact that the prying behaviour I mentioned above is subject to learning and that youngsters are initially not good at it. I can add these things from HBW if needed.
  • The taxonomy sections mentions the closest relative being teh Spotless within Sturnus - these are probably the only two species in that genus. This also means that the morphological adaptation for prizing open the ground (the enlarged muscles are called the protractor muscles btw) are not unique to that genus, being shared by the closely related Acridotheres and Creatophora, and indeed several other genera, although it is most developed in this species, the Spotless and the White-cheeked Starling. Notably in these species it is paired with a narrower skull, and, according to HBW, the eye can be moved forward to peer down the length of the bill because of this.
More to follow after my copyedit run. Sabine's Sunbird talk 19:54, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Captions that are complete sentences should end in periods
  • File:Sturnus_vulgaris_map.png: what base map was used to create this image?
  • File:SturnusPorphyronotusSmit.jpg needs a US PD tag
  • File:MozartStarlingTune.PNG needs US PD tag. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:21, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tentative support on prose and comprehensiveness. Comments will be reading through and jotting queries below. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:34, 17 March 2013 (UTC) all appears in order - prose and layout look good. Big topic so I can't see any glaring omissions and can't imagine we'd be able to include every article on the species.....Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:43, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Old English "staer", later "stare" derive from an Indo-European root dating back to the second millennium BC, as does the Latin word. - couple of things here. (i) I find "are derived" (passive) more natural-sounding than "derive" (active) (ii) I thought the practice was to consider Old English as foreign in some ways and italicise the word - (?) (iii) when is "stare" - Middle English etc. do we have dates? (iv) any other discussion on what the indo-european root actually was?
  • The text implies that stare was the form in the Middle English period, becoming scarce in the C17, but doesn't actually say that. The existence of an Indo-European root is implied by the fact that the Latin, OE (and several old Germanic cognates) aree obviously derived from a common ancestor, but Lockwood doesn't speculate on this. Unless I can find another source, this may be as good as it gets. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:34, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The songsters are more commonly male although females also sing on occasions. - see I would have said "The songsters are more commonly male although females also sing on occasion." - the last word a sort of collective noun/adverbial thing....

Otherwise looks pretty on-target for FA status....Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:02, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Should the article refer more specifically to Mycobacterium avium or avian tuberculosis rather than "tuberculosis"? I recall that avian Tb occasionally affects humans, mainly immuno-compromised humans; however, I think that by just using "tuberculosis" Wiki-linked to the Wiki article, which is mainly about human tuberculosis, is misleading. In the absence of a Wiki article specifically about M. avium, then I think that a piped link to the genus Mycobacterium would be more appropriate. Snowman (talk) 13:07, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Captive birds can accumulate excess iron in the liver, a condition which can be prevented by adding black tea-leaves to the food": I am not sure what emphasis to put on this. Does this imply that haemosiderosis is a common problem in captive starlings? Snowman (talk) 15:35, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've tweaked to make it clear that this is a common problem with starlings (and apparently toucans and birds of paradise too). Low-iron diets have only limited success. The sources are a bit vague as to why it's not a problem with wild birds "In natural environments, iron accumulation varies with seasonal changes and environmental stress levels and is influenced by other dietary constituents." Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:52, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The man-made structures are probably over-represented among the images but nests in holes are not so easy to photograph. I have changed one image in the article and added another which I hope covers both the points you raise. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:46, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The image of the two chicks in the gap in a wall is pleasing. I have removed the other new image of a juvenile beginning to moult and showing some adult plumage and replaced it with an excellent Featured Picture showing a bird of a similar age. I think that the article needs an image of an younger all-brown juvenile. Young juveniles are noticeable in the spring (? summer) when they come into gardens to feed in a family flock. Snowman (talk) 12:07, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lets be more ambitious with image selection and placement, because it is a very common species and there are plenty of photographs on Commons and Flickr. There might be a suitable photograph of a nest with eggs, but I would like like to risk disturbing a nest myself, or perhaps a suitable painting of the eggs. I have seen a few images of all-brown juveniles on Flickr, but not one that is quite right for the article yet. The infobox image is an FP and should be shown on the page somewhere; nevertheless, I wonder if an image with the bird facing into the page and on a less distracting perch would be more suitable in the infobox. The latter half of the article has plenty of space for a few photographs. Are there any opinions of showing videos of starlings doing things in the article? Any suggestions to improve the artwork? Snowman (talk) 10:02, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Common Starlings follow an overall power-law dispersal kernel with an exponent around 1.5 and a 'good-stay, bad-disperse' rule of mobility sensitive to habitat quality.[76]"; jargon. Snowman (talk) 22:44, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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