Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds#So long, and thanks for all the fish

The page La Palma chaffinch is out of date, describing it as a subspecies of Common Chaffinch (now Eurasian Chaffinch) Fringilla coelebs. Since the split-up of F. coelebs into 4 species, it is now a subspecies of Canary Islands Chaffinch F. canariensis, from which it differs only minimally (unlike its substantial difference from F. coelebs). I was going to update it, but then thought: is it really distinct enough to deserve its own page? Would it be better merged into Canary Islands Chaffinch? - MPF (talk) 00:25, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

:What a deafening silence! 😂 If no other comment I'll merge La Palma Chaffinch into Canary Islands Chaffinch tomorrow or soon thereafter - MPF (talk) 17:58, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

After doing some updates to List of birds by common name, I see that Violet-hooded starling, Violet-hooded Starling and Aplonis circumscripta now redirect to Metallic starling. My reading of the IOC World Bird List at https://www.worldbirdnames.org/new/ioc-lists/master-list-2/ is that Violet-hooded starling should be created as a new article. Thanks to those who have cleaned up the others. One more to go.

There are several species for which Wikipedia and the IOC World Bird List have different names.

I'm sure there are good reasons for many or all of these, but wanted to make a clear list of differences. Thanks, SchreiberBike | ⌨  02:03, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

:Cheers for compiling this list! Out of curiosity, do we consider it a mandate of this project to move all these pages over to the "official" IOC names? Though these are the official English names set by the IOC, they do not necessarily reflect the names actually most commonly used by birders in the relevant region, and there are a few of these that I find quite questionable, eg. the change from kererū to "New Zealand pigeon". As an Australian birder I can certainly say that everyone I know calls Chenonetta jubata "(Australian) wood duck" and not "maned duck". Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 02:45, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

:: I though that the default was to follow IOC names, but that regional names might be favoured for birds found in that region. So some American birds follow Cornell over IOC.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

:::@SchreiberBike @Ethmostigmus @Jts1882 - yes, that's right there are some where we follow local rather than IOC names; one where we don't but I feel strongly that we should add to this list, is Aegypius monachus, which is universally known as [Eurasian] Black Vulture in Europe / Western Palaearctic, rather than the wholly inappropriate Cornell/IOC "Cinereous Vulture" ('cinereous' = the colour of wood ash, i.e., pale greyish-white: totally wrong for this bird).

:::But there is also the additional point that a very few species pages here follow Cornell taxonomy as well as names; these I think should be worked over to IOC taxonomy to conform to the rest of our coverage (and Commons', and Wikidata's, coverage), even if the page names remain at Cornell's.

:::There is also still a whole batch of country bird lists that follow Cornell for both names and taxonomy, frequently against the official lists and popular usage of those countries: these all need converting to IOC, or whichever authority is used in the country. - MPF (talk) 10:47, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Based on the above table kindly provided by {{u|SchreiberBike}}, I propose that we start by changing the names of the following articles. These should (hopefully) be uncontentious as in each case the new name would align Wikipedia with all three world lists: the IOC (15.1), Clements/eBird (Oct 2024) and BirdLife/IUCN. In three cases the Wikipedia article currently has a scientific name.

Note that a spreadsheet comparing the IOC and Clements is available [https://www.worldbirdnames.org/IOC%20v15-1%20v%20Clements%202024.xlsx here].

• Bahian mouse-colored tapaculo -> Boa Nova tapaculo
• Western sirystes -> Choco sirystes
• Comoros blue vanga -> Comoro blue vanga
• Northern dark newtonia -> Dark newtonia
• Hood mockingbird -> Española mockingbird
• Southern giant hummingbird -> Giant hummingbird
• Red-tailed leaflove -> Leaf-love
• Cyanoramphus malherbi -> Malherbe's parakeet
• Malia grata -> Malia (bird)
• Eupsittula canicularis -> Orange-fronted parakeet
• Pale-chinned blue flycatcher -> Pale-chinned flycatcher
• Delalande's coua -> Snail-eating coua
• Blue-fronted amazon -> Turquoise-fronted amazon
• Woodwards's batis -> Woodwards' batis

If there are no objections, I'll ask an admin to make the moves. - Aa77zz (talk) Aa77zz (talk) 17:21, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

:Mostly OK for me; the only one I'd query is the batis: as IOC has a general policy of possessives of names ending in —s being —s's (e.g. Ross's gull, Pallas's leaf warbler, etc.), is this change really correct, or an error in the latest version of IOC? Might be worth asking David Donsker about it. Of leaf-love, assuming that goes ahead, the current disambing page Leaflove will also need reworking. - MPF (talk) 17:54, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

::The scientific name titles for Cyanoramphus malherbi and Eupsittula canicularis were the result of move discussions in 2023. They should not be moved back to the IOC vernacular names without starting a new discussion. Plantdrew (talk) 18:55, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

:::Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't looked at the Talk pages. -Aa77zz (talk) 19:05, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

::::Blue-fronted amazon was moved to that title after a (fairly long) 2023 discussion too. Having been moved back and forth previously. Iloveparrots (talk) 22:24, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

:::::I've moved Pale-chinned blue flycatcher to Pale-chinned flycatcher (the only one where the new name was a red link!) as IOC's reasoning for dropping the 'blue' was to match other lists, thus uncontroversial - MPF (talk) 16:58, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::Objection: There has been substantive discussions about the name of the blue-fronted Amazon, and that name should not be changed just because someone has just discovered that it has a different IOC name. Snowman (talk) 19:43, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

To move the wrongly titled grass warbler to the scientific name Locustella. See talk:grass warbler for reasons - MPF (talk) 01:35, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

:Seems to be 'Grasshopper warbler' [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=locustella%2Cgrass+warbler%2Cgrasshopper+warbler&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 per the n-grams] and limited talk page discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 09:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

::I support moving Grass warbler to the genus name Locustella. I've commented on talk:grass warbler.- Aa77zz (talk) 11:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

:::{{done}} Shyamal (talk) 02:30, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Should the page for List of endemic birds of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands be deleted as I have already included it in the page I just created - List of birds of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands? Mitsingh (talk) 13:10, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

:Better to merge to the older page to retain the older page's history, by adding in the non-endemic species, and rename to the more inclusive name. - MPF (talk) 20:03, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

::If List of endemic birds of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were converted to a redirect to List of birds of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which has the information which used to be in the endemic birds list, I think that would work easily enough. The history of the old page will still exist at the redirect. SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:40, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

:::The endemic species portion of your article should have the reference cited to the book, not Researchgate. AryKun (talk) 22:38, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

::::One more small change: per MOS:TIES "This list also uses British English throughout" should be changed to "This list also uses Indian English throughout". Given that the spellings of UK and Indian English hardly differ, I doubt it will make much if any additional differences, but there could be odd ones? - MPF (talk) 08:59, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::Most differences fall under COMMONALITY. The usual difference is displaying large numbers in crore, but that seems unlikely to apply to this list, so I don't think there's anything to specifically look out for. CMD (talk) 10:22, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::So should the other page (List of endemic birds of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands) be deleted? Mitsingh (talk) 10:49, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::I think MPF has the best idea, merging and then renaming. CMD (talk) 10:56, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::::Why can't we delete the endemic species page and keep this one as the endemic list is already inside the new article? Mitsingh (talk) 15:25, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::::Per MPF it would preserve the 20 year history of the existing list. CMD (talk) 15:34, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::::: Agree with MPF and CMD. Keeping the history is important for proper attribution. The new material should be added to the older article and the title changed (page moved). Consensus should also be sought for changing the scope and a page move, but I think this discussion would suffice.  —  Jts1882 | talk  16:53, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::::::I have moved the material to List of endemic birds of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Now we have to move the page and delete the new one. Mitsingh (talk) 12:13, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::::::I disagree that these should be combined. Why not make the endemic list something like List of endemic birds of Borneo, where there is a discussion about how those endemics evolved, where they're found (ie. most restricted to the highlands), what threats they face (since many are endangered), etc. None of this will take place in a general list of the islands' 410 species they've now been dumped into. MeegsC (talk) 13:00, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::::::::That's a good idea. I'll change it back for now. Mitsingh (talk) 13:39, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

White owl currently redirects to the article White Owl (cigar brand). Should the lower caps version redirect to Snowy owl or Western barn owl, both known as white owls? Mika1h (talk) 11:23, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

:The article about the cigar has a link to :White Owl (disambiguation) right near the top, though it's slightly hidden by a template that's been there since 2009. I'll look at cleaning up the cigar article to see if that can be removed. I think that's adequate. SchreiberBike | ⌨  13:00, 23 April 2025 (UTC)