Talk:List of birds of Great Britain

Untitled

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)

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)

"British avifauna" article

British avifauna seems to be covering the same topic. It might be possible to merge it into this list. Snowman (talk) 19:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Grey Partridge

If the grey partridge is a non migratory species how did it arrive in Britain? Dennis the mennis 18:33 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Dennis the mennis, I don't understand partridge question, it doesn't need to migrate because it's resident here, no question of "arrival" Jimfbleak - talk to me?

I presume Dennis the mennis is referring to my reverting of his removal of Category C ("Species that, although introduced, now derive from the resulting self-sustaining populations.") from the Grey Partridge entry. Grey Partridge is both native (Category A) and introduced (Categories C2 and E*). The official British List is at this link (see page 2 for Grey Partridge) and the categories are explained here. Just as with Pheasant and Red-legged Partridge, the UK population is supplemented by birds released for shooting each year. Unlike those species, it's also native. The categories are nothing to do with migration; I think Dennis the mennis may be confusing migration with introduction. Dave.Dunford (talk) 19:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Bearded vulture

@Macaulaykibbles: Do you have a source for the bearded vulture being a "B rare vagrant" to Great Britain? It's not on the list of the British Ornithologists' Union. Thank you and welcome to Wikipedia. SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:28, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Capercaillie?

Would the capercaillie really count as a C class? It was reintroduced and originally native, not introduced and invasive (like the Canada goose, for example). Ddum5347 (talk) 16:50, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

It's correct. The article follows the official BOURC British list, and they have it listed as Class C3 ("Naturalized re-established species – species with populations successfully re-established by Man in areas of former occurrence, e.g. Red Kite Milvus milvus.") and E* ("Species recorded as introductions, human-assisted transportees or escapees from captivity, and whose breeding populations (if any) are thought not to be self-sustaining. Species in Category E that have bred in the wild in Britain are designated as E*."). Class C is correct for native species that went extinct and were reintroduced; the BOURC classes are not concerned with whether or not a species is invasive. Dave.Dunford (talk) 12:54, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Scope of list

Most of the birds listed here seem to be "rare vagrants" (320, by my count), a category which apparently can include any species of whom a member has accidentally flown thousand of kilometres off course and stumbled upon Great Britain once. I don't think this is a particularly helpful inclusion criteria. Maybe it's of interest to ornithologists, but in a general-purpose encyclopaedia an unsortable list in which most of the entries are edge cases is not particularly helpful. Most readers will be coming to this article looking for examples of birds that regularly call Great Britain home. That can include species with very small resident populations, or species which regularly visit the island during annual migrations even if they don't stick around for long, but "rare vagrants" should at the very least be moved to a separate list so the actually relevant information isn't swamped by misleading pedantry about albatrosses apparently being a "bird of Great Britain". HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 18:57, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Disagree. There is a spectrum of abundance from "common garden bird" to "one-time vagrant" and anywhere you draw a line between those extremes will be subjective. The BOURC's British List is widely recognised and provides an objective criterion. To take your example: Black-browed Albatross appears in British waters every year. Why should it not be considered a "British bird"? Dave.Dunford (talk) 10:46, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Can you please explain how the BOURC's British List categorising a species solely as a vagrant is not an objective criterion for including those species on a separate list titled "list of vagrant birds of Great Britain"? As it stands the majority of entries on this list are "rare vagrants", and since the way this list is organised provides no simple way of sorting the entries by status this makes the list extremely cluttered and hard to navigate. If say, a fifth of the entries here were vagrants rather than more than half, then it would be less of an issue. Please remember that this is a general-purpose encyclopaedia and that sticking dogmatically to the style of specialist sources is often detrimental to our goals as an encyclopaedia. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 11:28, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

The article is titled "List of birds of Great Britain", not "List of common birds of Great Britain" (or whatever). If a bird has appeared in Great Britain (even just once), it is, by definition, a "bird of Great Britain". If you decide to exclude some species, the list is incomplete. The "rare vagrant" categorisation is not part of the BOURC's list, I believe; as far as I know it's an editorial addition, so is not objective – some of the species listed as "Rare vagrant" occur every year (e.g. Black-browed Albatross, as noted above) whereas others have occured only once. Dividing the list above Black-browed Albatross would be arbitrary. The cure is worse than the (perceived) disease.

You state that "Most readers will be coming to this article looking for examples of birds that regularly call Great Britain home." Where's your evidence for that claim? What you call "pedantry" I (and most knowledgeable ornithologists) would call "accuracy". It's significant that half of the species that have occurred in Britain are vagrants – it's partly because of the UK's geographical position at a crossroads of migratory routes, and partly because of the number of experienced observers and the long history of birdwatching in this country, but the same distribution of species would apply to most countries: a relatively small number of common species, and a long "tail" of rarities. I don't see the problem in the article reflecting that reality. Dave.Dunford (talk) 13:50, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

I dispute the addition of the {{Unfocused}} tab, for the reasons given above. Any exclusion of species that have occurred in the British Isles on the grounds of infrequency is original research. Dave.Dunford (talk) 14:15, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

I can see HumanBodyPiloter5's point that just looking at common birds would be useful to some. If there were a way to sort the list so that only common birds would show if that's what the reader wanted, maybe we should do that. Conceivably there could be a separate List of common birds of Great Britain. However, I see problems with those ideas. First, I don't know a way to sort the whole list, but maybe someone who better knows how tables work could come up with a solution. Second, reaching agreement on what would be considered common would be difficult. Third, simply following the local authorities, in this case the BOURC, is much easier.

I also disagree with the {{Unfocused}} tag. The list is focused, there is just disagreement as to what the focus should be.

I want Wikipedia to be useful to everyone, not just specialists, but it I also want it to be complete and accurate. The rare birds are labeled as such and I think that's sufficient. SchreiberBike | ⌨  14:38, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia being useful to everyone is in now way incompatible with it being incomplete. The issue here is presentation. At present this is a list of birds that have been documented in Great Britain, with certain caveats, split into separate sublists listing the different species by family. This is a method of sorting which to a specialist may be the most helpful, but most readers are not specialists. Different readers will be looking for very different sets of information, and some of these sets of information are quite hard to retrieve from this article.

For example, if a reader wants to know what species of bird have resident populations in Great Britain (which I would assume would be one of the most likely reasons someone would visit a general-purpose encyclopaedia article titled "list of birds of Great Britain"), the only way to retrieve this information is to manually go through the article and discount all the entries which are not listed as having resident populations. Given the length of the list, this method is time consuming, and is relatively likely to lead to readers making errors while trying to derive such information (they may miss one of the species they are looking for, or accidentally include one which is not a part of the group they are trying to find).

Personally the best way to organise the article would appear to me to be making it one big sortable table, allowing people to group together all members of the same order, or the same family, or the same status, but I lack sufficient knowledge of MediaWiki's markup to implement that myself.

HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 15:25, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't object to the suggested reorganisation, though I'm not sure how well it would work technically. I'm still not convinced that someone, layman or otherwise, coming to an article called "List of birds of Great Britain" would be expecting to find a list of some of the birds of Great Britain. A more likely query would be "is species X found/rare in Great Britain?", and this article tells you that without too much difficulty. Dave.Dunford (talk) 15:31, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

To me "of Great Britain" has a very different connotation to "in Great Britain", which is why I feel the list is potentially misleading. If the title was "list of birds documented in Great Britain", then I would be less concerned, but as it currently stands I can see a lot of readers coming to incorrect conclusions, especially if they misinterpret "vagrant" (which is relatively obscure vocabulary and doesn't contrast particularly clearly with "visitor"). HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 15:37, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

That seems a rather individual interpretation; conversely, I don't see any real difference between the three titles and the species I'd expect each to cover, and I don't think the current title is misleading. What "incorrect conclusions" is anyone going to come to from the article as it stands? I'm still unconvinced that lay readers are well served by an incomplete list. One of the key features of the British avifauna is that it's so extensive (by north European standards). Dave.Dunford (talk) 15:47, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Scrolling through this list, I make a few observations:

• First of all, the list is indeed quite unwieldy. I see no issue with a proposal to split the "vagrant" entries of the list into a new list. If after such a split, the name "List of birds of Great Britain" is misleading, then the solution is simply to move the list to a new name, or add hatnotes.
• Secondly, if such a list, hypothetically titled List of vagrant birds to Great Britain or something similar, would be WP:OR, then is it not already OR that many of the entries already on this list claim that 300 or so birds listed are "rare vagrants"? If so, then perhaps that wording should be removed.
• Looking over the actual list, I see that it has several categories by which the birds are divided. If this list is based on their list, then, at minimum, I feel the list ought to be given the functionality for the reader to sort these birds according to how the BOURC categorizes them. Most ideally, we should have the 300 and some "vagrant birds," in a separate list of "vagrant" or "visitor" birds, which includes birds that fit in the BOURC's "Category C5." Given that this is a category they made themselves, I fail to see how splitting this list up according to that would qualify as original research, because it's clearly not- though you could perhaps argue against it on other grounds, but I'd say this is an issue of article size and nothing to do with verifiability. WP:OR does not prohibit us splitting up articles in order to assist comprehension- and even if it did, I would invoke WP:IAR here.

silvia (User:BlankpopsiclesilviaASHs4) (inquire within) 18:16, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Context is important with there being over 400 lists in the series of "List of birds of". Every other such list I'm aware of has a complete list of the birds which have been identified in that locality. Great Britain may be unique in having such a large portion of birds which are rare, vagrant or otherwise. If there's no objection, I'll post a note at WT:BIRDS to see if there are any ideas there. (The note would say something like "Please see the discussion at Talk:List of birds of Great Britain#Scope of list where there is discussion about changing the scope of List of birds of Great Britain.") SchreiberBike | ⌨  20:48, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

For my part, I have no objection to notifying WT:BIRDS; that seems like a no-brainer to me. silvia (User:BlankpopsiclesilviaASHs4) (inquire within) 20:51, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks both. Happy to see what WT:BIRDS have to say. But responding to each of BlankpopsiclesilviaASHs4's points in turn:

• "I see no issue with a proposal to split the "vagrant" entries of the list into a new list." With respect, your ignorance of ornithological convention is not a reason to dispense with it. By splitting the list, the list is rendered incomplete. The BOURC British list is the only definitive list of British birds. It's widely recognised by all authorities, and its deliberations are made by a committee of experts. Splitting the list up according to some arbitrary rarity criterion makes the article less useful, and any method of deciding the split will be a value judgement – WP:OR, in other words. Also, it's useful (and conventional) to have all the gulls (for example) together in taxonomic order, regardless of whether they are common in Britain, rare, or somewhere in between. That's why this article, like virtually all serious works that deal with multiple bird species, is arranged taxonomically and not by some arbitrary value judgement about rarity.
• "Most ideally, we should have the 300 and some "vagrant birds," in a separate list of "vagrant" or "visitor" birds" Why???? No competent birder or taxonomist divides or orders birds in such a way, or refers to "visitor" birds – there are migrants (some of which are very common) and vagrants (appearing more or less frequently), but the line between them is fuzzy. This article has existed for years with nobody ever suggesting, until now, that "it's too long". It's as long as it has to be – there are 620-odd species on the British list, and there is no changing that inconvenient fact by dividing them arbitrarily.
• "which includes birds that fit in the BOURC's "Category C5." A non-starter. Category C5 most definitely is not a category for all vagrant birds. As I understand it, it contains a single species (Egyptian Goose), part of whose "wild" population in Britain originates from a naturalised (i.e. non-natural) population abroad. The BOURC categories are not (much) concerned with rarity or abundance – Siberian Blue Robin (a UK rarity) and European Robin (a common garden bird) are both in Category A, meaning they have occurred in the UK in a wild state without obvious human intervention; the point of the categories is to reflect the origin(s) and status of the species in a British context, regardless of abundance.
• "is it not already OR that many of the entries already on this list claim that 300 or so birds listed are "rare vagrants"?" Possibly, though I can't see any cases I'd argue with, and it's much less egregious to give an indication of relative rarity in a column of a table than it would be to irretrievably divide birds into "common" and "rare" lists based on that same indication. If you really wanted to, you could probably find the number of accepted sightings of each species (for the rarer species) – the data exists – but (a) it would be OR, again and (b) the work isn't worth the candle.

Advocates for splitting the list are effectively advocating that we change reality in order to avoid technical limitations of the Wiki software (or, more likely, the way this article has been compiled). There are no firm lines between "resident species", "occasional breeder", "common migrant", "uncommon migrant" and "rare vagrant" – it's a spectrum. Dave.Dunford (talk) 20:54, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

As proposed above, I've posted a notice about this discussion at WT:BIRDS. I also removed the {{Unfocused}} tag which read {{Unfocused|reason=the list contains an excessive number of entries dedicated to "vagrant" birds which are not native to Great Britain, and should be covered in a separate list for the sake of ease of reader comprehension and organization|talk=Scope of list|date=December 2022}} for the reasons I described above. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:10, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Not to stick my whiskers where they don't belong, but to me a list of birds of <X place> would be a list of bird species that have an actual wild population living in that place for at least part of the year. SilverTiger12 (talk) 04:49, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

As explained above, it's a continuum. There's no objective line between "uncommon migrant" and "rare vagrant". Spotted sandpiper has bred in the UK but is still a rare vagrant. Dave.Dunford (talk) 09:12, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Rhea

This article reflects the official British List, compiled by the BOURC. Rhea is not on that list. The fact that a handful of escaped birds – probably from the same source – are running around an estate does not automatically place Rhea in Cat C, any more than cows escaping from a field makes them part of the British fauna. Category C is for "Species that derive from translocation(s) (i.e. human-mediated movement and release (IUCN/SCC 2013)) resulting in the establishment of self-sustaining populations within Britain..." (my emphasis). There is no evidence that Rhea populations are self-sustaining. Numerous feral species (e.g. Indian Peafowl, Black Swan, Bar-headed Goose) have better credentials but aren't included. If we're including Rhea, why not Helmeted Guineafowl, Zebra Finch, Budgerigar, etc., which are almost certainly commoner escapes from captivity than Rhea? Dave.Dunford (talk) 10:01, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Then there should be a category for escaped birds which have confirmed sightings. Chumzwumz68 (talk) 02:16, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

There is, but only if it forms a self-sustaining population. Otherwise the category could include any cagebird, ornamental duck, tropical owl, fancy pheasant, flamingo, falconer's bird of prey or other domestic bird that happened to escape, which would be daft. I saw a zebra running down the road once (it had escaped from a nearby safari park) – but I won't be adding zebra to List of mammals of Great Britain. Dave.Dunford (talk) 12:27, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

We'll see if there are any further analyses into these birds in the UK Chumzwumz68 (talk) 17:43, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Images

A lot of the images here were very poorly selected - the Roseate Tern photo was the Australian subspecies, the Goosander photo was the American subspecies, and so on, showing subspecies never recorded in Britain, while others are zoo crap, and a few even showed the wrong species (the White's Thrush Zoothera aurea entry had a Scaly Thrush Z. dauma pic from Thailand!). I've started on replacing these, where possible with photos of individuals taken in Britain, or at least of the subspecies that are known to occur in Britain, if the photo is from elsewhere in the species' range. Additionally, for vagrant species where British records are largely autumn immatures (e.g. Parulidae), I'd suggest the pic should show that plumage, not an adult male, or a bird at a nest. Please help by checking and changing for any others I've missed! - MPF (talk) 14:25, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your work. Every improvement you make is appreciated. Your points about using pictures appropriate to the birds' appearance when they are in Great Britain are spot on. SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:21, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Apart from the ones I did more-or-less randomly yesterday, I'm going through more systematically now and have reached the end of Galliformes :-) Must upload a few more of my own pics too, e.g. I've got pics of a UK feral Ruddy Duck, which we don't currently have any pics of on Commons - MPF (talk) 22:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Subspecies

What do others think about their inclusion in the list? They were already given for Motacilla flava and M. alba, in both cases incompletely, but not for any other species. I've completed those two, and added subspecies for a couple more (Luscinia svecica, Turdus iliacus) where there are very distinctive subspecies. A full listing would add substantially to the list; the 10th (2022) edition of the official BOU list includes all identified subspecies, so the data is available, and reasonably up-to-date. I can see 3 options for inclusion:

• No subspecies (i.e., remove the ones already added, and don't mention subspecies at all).
• Include the most distinctive ones readily identifiable in the field and with widely used English vernacular names (e.g. Pied & White Wagtails, Greenland & Russian White-fronted Geese, etc.), but not bother with those where subspecies identification largely rests on ringed birds of known origin or DNA tests and there is no separate vernacular name (e.g. Pied Flycatchers Ficedula hypoleuca hypoleuca, F. h. sibirica, etc.).
• Include all subspecies on the BOU list, even where they are effectively indistinguishable.

Thoughts, please! My personal preference would be for the intermediate partial listing, but happy to go with what others suggest. - MPF (talk) 14:25, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

There is no Wikipedia wide consensus on the inclusion of subspecies. I'd suggest you set out clearly what you think the inclusion criteria should be and wait a week or so for discussion or objections. After that, I'd say, that for this article, a consensus has been established and you should edit based on that. Later, I'd suggest bringing that as a proposed consensus to WT:BIRDS and perhaps we can move forward on all lists of birds. SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:28, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Well, I guess I'll make a formal proposal here, that if a subspecies has a distinct English vernacular name in widespread birding use (Pale-bellied Brent Goose, Greenland Whitefront Goose, Baltic Gull, Siberian Chiffchaff, White-spotted Bluethroat, Pied Wagtail, etc.), it should be added. Though I could easily be persuaded to go for full inclusion per the BOU list. - MPF (talk) 22:31, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to stick to the BOU list, personally. Anything else starts to feel like WP:OR. Dave.Dunford (talk) 08:25, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

@Dave.Dunford: I don't think it's original research, more like derived or secondary research, but on reflection I'd agree that we should include all the subspecies, not just those with distinct English names. It'll take a lot of work to add them, though. @SchreiberBike: moving on to adding subspecies on other national lists may not be possible in many instances; not all national lists specify subspecies, e.g. the Polish list (& its English language edition) doesn't. Some do, e.g. Denmark does (10 years old, but annual report updates to 2022 here). As an aside though (after looking round here), most of the European national lists here need serious work, as they have been improperly done on with Clements list taxonomy and names, when the countries concerned all use IOC taxonomy and names (converting from published IOC taxonomy to Clements taxonomy likely does breach WP:OR, and the change to American spellings, contra local English usage, also breaches MOS:TIES): those lists will need a lot of correcting. - MPF (talk) 01:18, 19 July 2024 (UTC)