Talk:List of birds of North America

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the List of birds of North America article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

This article was nominated for deletion on 22 December 2012 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

Birds Mid‑importance

List of birds of North America is part of WikiProject Birds, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative and easy-to-use ornithological resource. If you would like to participate, visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. Please do not substitute this template.BirdsWikipedia:WikiProject BirdsTemplate:WikiProject Birdsbird articles

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Birds To-do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Endemic birds of Papua New Guinea (more)
Cleanup : Bullfinch • Vesper sparrow • Bird flight • Bird bath (more)
Copyedit : Plushcap • Magpie duck • Saker falcon (more)
Expand : Phalarope • Nidicolous • Gouldian finch • Cathartes • Cnemophilidae • Avian malaria (more)
NPOV : Debeaking • Driven grouse shooting • Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital (more)
Stubs : Cathartiformes • Semiplumbeous hawk • Rainbow-bearded Thornbill • Sunda scops owl (more)
Update : Coal tit • Scottish crossbill • New Caledonian lorikeet • Operation Migration (more)
Verify : Argus (bird) • Blyth's frogmouth • Nik Borrow • Pytilia • Fregata • Chestnut-headed tesia • Darter • Pallid scops owl • Starling (more)
Wikify : Ninox boobook ocellata • The Institute for Bird Populations (more)
Other : Add photos to bird articles needing photos (search Flickr for free images). Add taxonomic authorities to genus articles.

More outstanding tasks at the project's cleanup listing, Category:Birds articles needing attention, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Todo.

North America

	North America portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject North America, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of North America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.North AmericaWikipedia:WikiProject North AmericaTemplate:WikiProject North AmericaNorth America articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Untitled

I know this new list will create some controversy, but looking at comments at List of Birds of Canada and the United States, there seems to be some support wishing a complete North American list. I used the definitions of what Wikipedia defines as North America, so I'm interested in what people think..........Pvmoutside (talk) 02:23, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Suggested split - survey

Please sign your name using four tildes (~~~~) under the position you support, and please add a (hopefully brief and well thought out) comment. If you are happy with more than one possibility, you may wish to sign your names to more than one place. Extended commentary should be placed below, in the section marked "Discussion", though brief commentary can be interspersed.

Split this article
- Darekk2 (talk) 22:43, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- The hummingbirds have been split into a separate list. Some of the categories have similar lists elsewhere, so mergers might be better than creating new articles during the split, which I agree is necessary. G. C. Hood (talk) 16:26, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - The image and link provide very well visible information about that specific list. This main article is loading slowly, what can discourage some of people, however on the other hand dispersing birds among too many articles maybe is not good too (in terms of convenience of updating checklists, perhaps page rank in the internet would decrease ?). Darekk2 (talk) 17:56, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Do NOT split
- If this article is split then it would become very difficult to use. Other solutions should be tried first. If there is a large group that is indigenous only to NA then it may be possible to collapse that section (e.g. New World Quail) Op47 (talk) 17:07, 14 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

This is very good article, but horribly slow. I think that it could be split into 2-4 separate articles, each one with table of contents at the top linking to other ones. Here is an example:

Non passerines:

+/-birds associated with water
~419 species:

Other
~636 species:

Passeroformes

Group I
~488 species]]

Group II
~544 species]]

Darekk2 (talk) 22:43, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why are the passeroformes split into two groups? Couldn't they be easily represented in one list, e.g. Passerine birds of North America? G. C. Hood (talk) 22:02, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- because of large number of species - about 1000. It means 1000 lines of HTML code additionaly to those tons of style and javascript files. However very difficult question is - how to split them(if). Darekk2 (talk) 22:13, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - A single list is probably a good interim measure to get "List of North American birds" down to an appropriate length. The list of passerines will be significantly smaller, and can be split later if needed according to WP:SIZE. G. C. Hood (talk) 22:24, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Commenced split

Clearly, unless someone is brave enough to start the split then this will just go nowhere, hence I have made a start. Where the order contains a suitable number of species then I have started to split by order. I can see how this won't be to everyones satisfaction, so I have created a template Template:List of North American Birds (Navigation) with the intention that this is placed on all of the sub pages and the main page. If you feel that the grouping needs some adjustment then, if you alter the template, you don't need to alter all of the sub pages. The template is by no means final, I just did something to get things started. Op47 (talk) 16:53, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Orders are natural groups, but such split creates maybe too many subpages. This can be also unconvenient, like too large list. The template is certainly very good idea. Darekk2 (talk) 17:10, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alphabetizing by common name

In my opinion someone is destroying this article alphabetizing birds by common name. I don't have time to undo all these changes, but this is actually vandalism creating chaos in systematics. Perhaps that person has nothing to do with biology. Darekk2 (talk) 22:12, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The way I see it, the average Wikipedia user is going to look at this list, trying to find the specific bird they're looking for, based on the common name. At any rate, it's more organized than it was, unless there was some form of alphabetization in place that was not apparent. At any rate, the list was categorized under "Lists in need of alphabetization", and it's alphabetized. Belvyzep (talk) 07:48, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Belvyzep. To the general user an alpabetically list is easier to use and understand. In many other lists of species (butterflies, reptiles, etc.) I have worked on the norm is to list alphabetically by common name or binomial but less frequently by taxonmic order. Dger (talk) 15:49, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A constructive bird suggestion

Jimfbleak originally created this section on the Manual Of Style's Talk page, where it also got one reply from Aa77zz. I have copied it to here as it has nothing to do with improving the Manual of Style article, which is what that Talk page is for. And I will next add a message there to that effect, and redirecting discussion to here. Tlhslobus (talk) 04:58, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

At category:lists of birds by location and lists of birds by region, virtually all lists are titled "List of birds of Fooland" rather than "List of Fooland birds", as recommended by the bird project. I found two exceptions, one of which, for Gauteng, I moved. However, the other is List of North American birds; I hesitate to move this because of its high profile and previous accusations of WP:OWN. It seems odd to have one list title styled differently from more than 100 other regional/country etc lists, and I'm floating it here to see if my proposed action is viewed as controversial. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 19:35, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As a related issue, what is the view on all the substantive content being placed in a navbox, despite the fact that the navbox can't be used elsewhere because it is just the NAm list broken down into families? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 19:43, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at List of North American birds and found it slightly confusing. I didn't immediately realize that clicking on the order in the left column of the navbox such as Procellariiformes would take me to the page List of North American birds (Procellariiformes) rather than to the page Procellariiformes. I noticed that there is a subset of this list at List of birds of Canada and the United States. Aa77zz (talk) 21:52, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see Jimfbleak has made the name change anyway, adding the explanation on the MOS page (immediately below my note redirecting discussion here) that he was making the name change as there was no MOS issue. There are however page move issues, per WP:MOVE, notably that the move is 'potentially controversial' as his comment re his WP:OWN issue seems to imply, and that it is, or at least seems to be, related to the Category space and may thus involve additional work (I have already had to amend the Redirect of List of birds of Northern America because his name change created double-redirect problems). However I have little interest in the issue myself (having simply come across it on the MOS talk page). So I plan to bring it to the attention of the relevant experts in whatever forum is mentioned in WP:MOVE in order to give them early warning of any potential further problems (such as the double-Redirect one already mentioned), and then I intend to bow out of the picture. Tlhslobus (talk) 06:01, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As mentioned above, I have now requested technical help at Wikipedia_talk:Requested_moves#What_to_do_about_an_issue_with_a_move_when_you_aren.27t_requesting_a_reversal.3F. I'm not sure that won't just be ignored, as there doesn't seem to be any guidelines on how to request such help without asking for a reversal, which I am NOT (and will NOT be) asking for. But I reckon I've already done rather more than can reasonably be expected, and I now intend to drop out of the picture. Tlhslobus (talk) 07:06, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite since split

Since all the sublists have been split off, much of this should be removed and the rest rewritten. If there's no objection, I'll give it a try soon. If anyone else would like to do it, please do. When I first looked at the page, it was not at all clear to me that the actual content was in the "List of North American birds" template at the bottom. On almost every other page such templates are related but not central. It took some time before I realized that the content of the page was there. SchreiberBike talk 20:38, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Changes made. The lead is unorthodox because the content is in a template. I described the template as a "light blue box" but I'm not sure if that is best. Please improve. Thank you. SchreiberBike talk 06:54, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Move family lists

In June of 2014, this page was renamed to make it parallel with other "List of birds of ..." lists. Would there be any objection to me moving the family lists the same way? For example, List of North American birds (Anseriformes) would become List of birds of North America (Anseriformes). The same would apply to the other 19 lists in the series. I would fix the template links too. SchreiberBike talk 07:15, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Done last week. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 22:59, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]