Talk:List of birds of Great Britain

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rename this "Birds of the United Kingdom", in line with the other "stuff in the UK" pages? Or maybe "Birds of the British Isles", since we maybe want a geographical rather than political thing. Link to Conservation in the United Kingdom too -- Tarquin 11:21 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

No. Were this a list of UK Prime Ministers or some such, sure, moving it to "Birds of the UK" would be appropriate. "Birds of the British Isles" would be OK though. (Or I think so - but I'm Australian, and I don't know that we colonials are entitled to a vote!) That there is an ephemeral human political organisation called the "United Kingdom", however, is utterly irrelevant to the birds. In the case of this topic, it is clearly correct to use a geographical term ("Britan", or possibly "British Isles", but not the political one. This precisely politically correct fetish is alright in its place - and indeed a good thing in many places - but at some point we have to bow to the reality of common usage. This is that point. Tannin
As the initial contributor to this article, I gave it the present title for consistency with European birds and Australian birds, and because there seems little logic in using a political rather than geographical framework. I did consider British Isles, but I seem to remember that unit is non-PC now.
Furthermore, the article is based on the British list. There are a number of groups where I would not be sure whether they have occurred in Ireland, such as the parrots, nuthatches, and Wallcreeper -- jimfbleak 12:38 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

Where does the statement that the Little Egret is "rare" come from? Is that an official statement from the BUO or something? If not it should be deleted - in the last 15 years or so they have become quite common on the estuaries of SW England (and I believe further north too, as far as South Wales, but I haven't seen them myself there). I think they are beginning to breed in England now but we'd need an authority to say that.

I will note the above facts on the Little Egret page but will leave adjustment of the list of British Birds to someone who knows its provenance.

seglea at 0816 UTC on 031104

I've removed the rare comment Little Egret, they are fairly common and do breed in the south now. jimfbleak 08:26, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Rock/Stock Pigeon

I renamed those two according to the official list—and then I noticed that this list doesn't necessarily follow the official one in cases where the British birding public doesn't. Are those two of the cases? In the case of the Rock Pigeon, does the non-birding public get a vote? Anyway, if someone reverts it, I'll know why.

By the way, it might be nice to indicate where this list differs from the official one.

—JerryFriedman 20:19, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You should probably move the articles and change the links properly instead of changing the link text but still have it point at the old article title. — Timwi 23:08, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The reason I didn't do that (other than fearing Jim's wrath) was this paragraph from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds:

The de facto standard for Wikipedia bird articles is Handbook of Birds of the World for the northern hemisphere, and the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (ISBN 0195532449) for exclusively southern groups. These should be used for all articles except for those dealing with a country or region, where the appropriate local offical list should be used, as in List of North American birds and British birds.

The on-line HANZAB species list still has "Rock Dove" (though it's time they got with the program!) and I assume the HBW hasn't changed. I think the conflict of standards is something of a problem, and will become worse as regional standards organizations update their lists yearly while the HBW, which was taxonomically conservative to begin with, is still far from complete after 13 years.
—JerryFriedman 17:03, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand. You're using different authorities for link texts than for article titles? — Timwi 20:36, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No, different authorities for article titles and regional species lists. For the present I'm just going along. —JerryFriedman 20:55, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just brought this subject up at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Birds#Taxonomic_authorities, which might also be a good place for any comments you have on the policy in general. —JerryFriedman 21:08, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)