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WikiProject Birds April newsletter

The Birds WikiProject Newsletter
April 2009

So close! After many long months of effort, we're only one article away from our project goal of 100 good or featured articles and lists. Can we make it by next month?

Articles of note

New good articles:



New project members



Article statistics


Bird articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total
FA 2 19 61 155 237
FL 1 6 24 31
FM 683 683
GA 6 11 34 159 1 211
B 10 38 71 241 3 363
C 12 104 271 1,139 4 1,530
Start 5 112 824 6,550 9 7,500
Stub 16 1,278 7,726 10 9,030
List 12 76 777 104 4 973
Category 1,286 1,286
Disambig 201 201
File 295 295
Portal 1 1
Project 26 26
Redirect 1 14 103 245 1,876 2,239
Template 2,894 2,894
NA 2 6 11 19
Other 29 29
Assessed 37 326 2,726 17,022 7,406 31 27,548
Unassessed 1 3 16 20
Total 37 326 2,727 17,025 7,406 47 27,568
WikiWork factors (?) ω = 99,311 Ω = 5.26


Project news
Start your puffins...
  • April's collaboration article is Puffin—a genus-level article about the "little brothers" of the ocean. Although this is another popular article with Wikipedia readers (the 59th most popular bird article, according to February's statistics), it currently ranks only as a "Start". Help us to improve its usefulness to our readers!
  • On a related note, be sure to vote for May's collaboration article, which will be chosen on April 27. If none of the existing nominations interest you, consider adding a new one!
  • The latest copy of the project's cleanup listing shows we're now overseeing more than 14,000 articles. Unfortunately, nearly 900 of them (more than 6%) are tagged as needing cleanup of some kind—from citations for questioned facts and entry of missing ISBN numbers to resolution of POV disputes and requests for expansion. While a considerable number of these could be resolved in a manner of minutes, scores have been awaiting cleanup for the better part of two years! If you've got a few minutes to spare, why not dip into the list and help to reduce the backlog. Of primary importance (from a project standpoint) are the problems identified with our FA articles—including Turkey Vulture.
  • As noted last month, we'll be removing from our "active participants" list the name of any editor who hasn't edited on Wikipedia for 6 months or more, putting them instead into a "retired editors" section. (Please note that will be easy to move yourself back into the active category if you start editing again after an extended absence.) This should help us to better evaluate our project's editor retention and make for more efficient newsletter delivery.
Commons and bird images
  • Except in very rare cases, all bird-related images, sounds and videos should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Those uploaded directly into en.wikipedia cannot be used by other Wikipedia or Wikimedia projects, and are also much harder to find. Unfortunately, there are currently a number of such images in existence. Some are not used in articles, and most are not placed into a bird-specific image category. If you come across one, please consider moving it to Wikimedia Commons, which has a much better system for categorizing bird images. You can search for and move images yourself, but or you can simply add them to Category:Bird images (which should only contain images from en.wikipedia, with the occasional exception such as featured pictures), which allows others to find and move them. If you need any assistance in getting starting, please contact Richard001 (talk · contribs).
Newsletter challenge

It was decided (by talk page agreement) that last month's challenge was too specific; instead a redirect was created to the aggressive mimicry article, which was expanded slightly with bird-related information. This month, we're looking for someone to start an article about ornithophily—pollination by bird; currently, this "article" exists only as a redirect to the more general article about zoophily. The person who creates this article and gets it beyond a mere stub level will be mentioned in the next newsletter.

Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!

To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.



Aepyornis redirect

Hi, in reply to your message regarding these 3 redirects. My inclination is that the redirects are appropriate as they are mentioned in the page they redirect to. The guideline for redirectsWikipedia:Redirect to me suggests they are appropriate and do not prevent anyone from creating pages there in the future. Even if they are not appropriate redirects the Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion for redirects are deliberately very limited in the cases where it is appropriate to speedy delete them. If you feel they should be deleted then feel free to take them toWikipedia:Redirects for discussion which is where such redirects should be discussed. I have removed the links from the Elephant Bird as you are right that there should be no links from that page that redirect back there.Davewild (talk) 17:42, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Birds February newsletter

The February 2009 issue of the Bird WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. MeegsC | Talk 22:22, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

albatross chicks

...are not altricial, they are semi-precocial, born with down and open eyes, but not fully precocial (they need brooding and defending for a few days. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sibley's behaviour book is adequate but not the last word. A quick lit search shows that the albies and petrels are generally treated as semiprecocial but more rarely as semi altricial.... but the important bit is that they are semi-something, not straight out something. From memory albatrosses can see at birth (as is the rest of the order) but Brooke (1998) doesn't discuss it.... I'll look at HBW at work tomorrow. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Altricial implies something like a passerine, naked, utterly immobile, blind. Utterly precocial suggests a chicken chick, running around at hatching feeding itself. Petrels tend to be able to move around the nest, have feathers and can see, but are still fed by the parents and brooded for a few days. They are effectively intermediate between the two extreme positions, but it is a matter of semantics to say they are semi precocial or semi altricial (although semi precocial is the more commonly used term). Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

citing tips

Nice work with all the albie stubs. You might be interested to know that when using the same reference more than once instead of formatting it like <ref name="Waugh"></ref> you can instead use this format <ref name="Waugh"/>. Just a bit simpler. Sabine's Sunbird talk 20:34, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Signpost — February 23, 2009

This week, the Wikipedia Signpost published volume 5, issue 8, which includes these articles:

The kinks are still being worked out in a new design for these Signpost deliveries, and we apologize for the plain format for this week.

Delivered by §hepBot (Disable) at 22:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ostrich Feed

Hello Speednat

You communicated with me regarding the amendment I made to the section called Ostrich Feed. You suggested that I had added the section. To put the record straight I was following the request to "improve" the section and provide referenced information. I attempted to do that with correctly referenced information and present not as a "how to", but to provide factual information on their nutritional requirements and differentiating between the wild and domesticated situation. As a newbie, can you please explain what made it a "how to" rather than "factual". I have looked at the section you referencedThis Policy, and the answer is not clear to me. Thank you Hegaldi (talk) 09:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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