Category talk:Perching birds

RFM discussion: June 2015–April 2022
This used to be at Category:Passerines, but was moved a few months ago - I would like to suggest it be moved back. Passerines is the more commonly used term (Google Ngram), particularly in the bird community. I doubt perching birds is in particularly common use; the common term is probably songbirds, which is technically inaccurate as it is usually taken to mean only the oscines. Keith the Koala (talk) 11:30, 19 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I've moved this to the proper venue for such requests. I'll comment on substance shortly. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:44, 19 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry for redefining the meaning of "shortly"... I renamed the category in the first place in an effort to make it more accessible to general users: I remembered seeing the Passeriformes referred to in various encyclopedias and bird books over the years as the "Perching Birds", and I also wondered if anyone would be confused by the fact that "-ines" names for animals are usually reserved for subfamilies (which end in -inae). Given that most users of this dictionary are probably not "in the bird community" and probably have never heard of terms such as passerines or oscines before coming here, I'm not sure how important it is to reflect usage in this case. That said, there are probably only a handful of languages with enough bird names to even need an intermediate category like this, so it's not really that big a deal. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:44, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * "Passerines" is uncommon, but it's not some obscure technical term - turn on Springwatch and you can hear Chris Packham talking about passerines until your wings fall off. "Perching birds" is really no better - nobody actually says "perching birds" except to try and explain what "passerines" means, on top of which it's not SoP (lots of other birds perch) so people might think they understand it when they don't. tbh, I'd be happiest with just lumping all birds in Category:Birds, I think it's easy to overcategorize these things. Keith the Koala (talk) 14:42, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * "Passerines" remind me of the often-used fungus group, the LBMs (little brown mushrooms).
 * If we continue to develop vernacular names and taxonomic names in parallel (to the extent that they are parallel), we can have the luxury of different classifications in different languages, not to mention the structure that emerges from Derived terms and the semantic relations headings. The relationships among taxonomic names are likely to diverge increasingly from those among vernacular names.
 * Among bird names, though, there is a major effort to have vernacular language names that correspond to taxonomic names and relationships. (Similarly with mammals.) The IOC birdname website has English bird family names (sometimes in form like "Kites, hawks, and eagles" or "Pheasants and allies") that seem designed to be in one-to-one correspondence with taxonomic family names. There are frequent correspondences at genus and species level as well. I'm not sure about higher levels.
 * Birds (Aves) are a class (or a clade) that we have fairly well covered AFAICT. It affords us one of the best opportunities to have good vernacular categorization and naming. I don't see why we don't have categories that correspond to multiple levels of groups of birds, though I would prefer that "bird" be left to at least one of the definition, image, and Hypernyms in the entry to communicate.
 * Both 'Passerines' and 'Perching birds' seem like high levels of categorization that don't well correspond to words in vernacular language usage. The IOC doesn't help much with terms like 'Oscines' and 'Suboscines'. A vernacular type-based name like 'Sparrow-like birds' would be communicative, but has little else to recommend it. DCDuring TALK 23:44, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The birding equivalent is LBJs (little brown jobs). Chuck Entz (talk) 06:04, 13 July 2015 (UTC)


 * not merged Notusbutthem (talk) 16:07, 13 April 2022 (UTC)