User talk:Jimfbleak

Hi Jim,

Please confer my user talk page: User talk:Tonius

Merci,

Tonius

Andean and Lesser Flamingo, Andean Goose, Bahama Pintail, Bean Goose, Black Swan, Cape Teal, Common Shelduck, Coot, Moorhen, Coreopsis, Emperor Goose, Lesser Snowgoose, Mute Swan, Whistling Swan, NeNe, Red-billed Whistling Duck, Red-breasted Goose, White-faced Whistling Duck, White-fronted Goose, White-headed Duck.

(http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/lovette/pdf/c-mos.pdf) Worth reading in full (bar the highly technical bits about their methiods which I have to take on faith)

My Blue-billed Duck is indeed beautiful, isn't she. Of all my photos, I like her the best. Now, to business: the passerines do indeed need a lot of sorting out, as we both know. I've made a start (or possibly made them worse!), but I really have very little on northern species, and not much on S Africa. I suggest that you go right ahead and classify as you see fit. (HBW is probably as good a guide as we are going to get. When I finally make up my mind which version to buy - CD, condensed, or the whole damn thing - I'll get one for myself. Even the full version will still cost maybe a quarter of what HANZAB costs. Uh - but now I'm getting mixed up with BWP. No matter, I've spent enough this last month or two, and Mr Swarovski and Mr Nikon are no doubt sipping vintage champagne and toasting one-another's heralth at my expense right now. Maybe next month.)

Don't worry too much about treading on toes: if I see a revision to a southern family that I don't agree with, I'll just revert you. :) Tannin

That sounds like plenty to be going on with to me! You have a nice touch - those were the very families I was going to alter. I'd volunteer to do the cuckoo-shrikes & allies (we have 8 species here) but I need HANZAB volume 7 for that and it won't be out for another year or so. But I do plan to go back to the place where I shot the Black-shouldered Kite last weekend in about 4 to 6 months time and see if the Black-faced Cuckoo-shrikes are nesting there again - equipped, of course, with scope and camera this time. We had a wonderful view of Mrs Cuckoo-shrike feeding the kids last year - how so many of them fit into that tiny nest without falling out, I'll never know! If they are there again, I'll doubtless visit several times and imprison several billion more electrons on my flash cards. Meanwhile, I seem to be making good progress on the Felidae, so I'll stick to it. -- T

Dolphin had the picture of the Chinese White for me too, until I pressed shift-reload (Mozilla). Obviously it's just a caching thing. Thanks for the heads-up about my talk page length -- yours is 34 kB by the way. -- Tim Starling 06:12 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi Jim, did you know about this website: http://www.yankeegardener.com/birds/. It contains drawings of some North American birds; not perfect IMO, but better than nothing. The copyright notice on that site is: While the specific content of Fifty Birds of Town and City is in the public domain and therefore free of copyright restrictions, please be advised that this website, including its graphical arrangements, fonts, sounds, and additional pictures are protected by U.S. copyright laws, and all rights are reserved. So we may use the pictures, which were taken from the book. I've just added this source to Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources -- Cordyph 07:58 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hello Jim, please check the new Image:Bird.paigntonzoo.500pix.jpg. I think it is much better than that we have in Motmot --Franz Xaver 10:31 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I checked http://darnis.inbio.ac.cr/ubis/find.html - "El pecho y la parte superior del abdomen varían entre verde con un leve tinte oliváceo y oliva ocráceo." say that the colour of the plumage is varying between green with an olive tinge and olive-ocre. There should be no male/female differences in the family. However, I am not sure about Momotus aequatorialis which has been separated from Momotus momota only recently. --Franz Xaver 14:05 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi Jim, when I see the taxobox image in Pheasant and Ringnecked Pheasant, I cannot help, there is something wrong with the beak of the bird. At least it is not typical for this species. Maybe the image I uploaded in de:Fasanenartige is the better one. --Franz Xaver 20:01 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I've been quiet these last few days, Jim. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time taking photographs of birds instead, and reviewing them, editing, trimming, sorting, all that stuff. Not much time writing. I'll do a little lighter stuff tonight (I'm bushed), but try to help out with a few family accounts over the next few days. You are doing great! Tannin

It's late and I'm off to bed in a moment, but on first thought, I'd say leave them as they are for the time being. Yes, those lists are interminable, but we will fill in the subfamily entries one by one as time goes by and, eventually, we can trim the great long lists back, as there will be shorter lists under each of the subfamilies by then. At that time, we can replace the mega-lists with higher-level anotated lists of the groups, rather than of the species. What I'm suggesting, in other words, is that the larger family articles should be handled the same way we did the ducks. Writing that subfamily level stuff is seriously hard work (I think it took me ~6 hours to do those duck subfamilies, and then there was your time on top of that) but produces a really first-class result.

But don't take too much notice of my ramblings: I'm just about out on my feet. Too much work. (Office work, volunteer work - I had a meeting go from 1:30 till 6:00PM today - family things, and then come the weekend, I drop everything and race off to all points of the compass taking photographs. I really ought to slow down. But tommorow is a busy day and then it will be Saturday and the birds will be calling me once again .... Life is too short, and whatever fool decreed that the day shuld have only 24 hours in it ought to be shot! Tannin

Regarding Michel Gelbart, you are correct in assuming he was an American.

Nice quail, Jim. Tannin

Thanks Jim, for the welcome. I just found the wikipedia and realized I might have something to contribute. I admit I'm somewhat of a generalist, and thus tend to avoid dates and such, but I welcome, even encourage, those sorts of corrections and additions. I'm sorry, but I'm just not a "know it all" just a "know a lot." I am learning some of the conventions, though sometimes my enthusiasm overruns my process. But since I'm a writer of various things I do not at all mind editing of my work, it's part of the job.

I have found, particularly with politics, a great usefulness with wikipedia in that it helps refine and delineate gray areas into more subsets of black and white, as people go back and forth with their revisions and changes. Exciting, even.

I look forward to adding my penny and a half.

Cheers, Jim Hlavac

I'm not doing much at present, I'm afraid Jim. Go right ahead with your white-eye family account. Be aware that there is an existing account, direct from the 1911 Encyclopedia Longwindia, under an odd name, er ... Zosterops. I suggest that you simply junk that one and start from scratch. Turn it into a redirect.

The Dicruridae is a little trickier. I think we shoud go with the HANZAB taxonomy on this one, as otherwise the monarch flycatchers, fantails, Willie Wagtail, and Mudlark are going to be very difficult to place. Sibley & Co have made it perfectly clear that they don't belong in the various ill-assorted groups they were formerly placed in (Mudlarks with Australian Magpies, for example, possibly because they are the same colour!) and that they are all related, both to each-other and to the drongos. I'm a little hamstrung as I need HANZAB Vol 7 page 1 for the family account, and it hasn't been published yet. But I should imagine that if you were to do a family account and just ignore the non-drongo members, I could scratch up enough info to edit that up into a more inclusive account.

Time I looked at today's pictures again. First impression was a disappointing day but often, on a more careful examination, it turns out that there are some good ones after all. Cheers -- T

Done some of the passerine families, others still to place in the correct order. Well "order" is not the word. The Passerida ordering is all over the place. But at least I can try to get the families in the right half. -- T

I should read more carefully - there is a very handy diagram in that link you gave me and I didn't spot it till just now. Off to work in a moment, but I'll slot a few more families in tonight. Also, I should expand on Dicruridae, it barely mentions the drongos so far. Thanks for the species list, BTW - I though you might have that info at your fingertips. Tannin

Hi Jim!
Just thought I'd let you know that I've put a Herring Gull pic at the bottom of the Gull article until such time as a Herring Gull article is done. Then I'll move it. Cheers!
Adrian Pingstone 15:58 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I have lots of Coot pictures, so I uploaded another one. (Hey! Jimbo is paying for the bandwidth and the server space after all. Seeing as it's his shout, let's drink doubles.) I was only stirring on the other matter of course. Let's see if I can't knock out another one or two tonight while I'm running hot. BTW, I don't have easy access to the outside Oz species for the Artamidae. There are several woodswallows in the New Guinea - Indonesia area. At worst, I could dig them out of the Sibley-Munroe list, but it's hard work finding things in there. I won't stuff about writing anything fancy, just try to get taxobox + stub for a couple more. I'll return to the passerine clasification a little later - probably not tonight. Tannin

Oh, and I nearly forgot. Write whichever family accounts you like - I won't feel trampled on. We can always change things later if we want to. I'm aiming to do Pachycephalidae next. Come the spring, I'll see if I can't get a nice picture of a Golden Whistler for it - that little beauty will knock your socks off. (And, if you were here to hear him, amaze you with the volume he produces - per kilo, I reckon he must be the loudest bird I've ever come across. I doubt that anything is louder on a dB per gram basis this side of the insect kingdom. -- T

Why not just do the lot? Dump them into the appropriate places, and I'll come along after, adding taxobox & stub or, in the case of some of the funny ones, possibly switching the content over to other family names - e.g., the list you probably have for Cracticidae is more-or-less accurate for what I now have (per HANZAB) as Artamidae. Which reminds me, I meant to create a redirect for that. Tannin

Hi Jim, I was wondering why you removed Capitals of the Netherlands from Votes for Deletion without deleting it. The consensus was to delete it and it had been on for more than a week. I have relisted it under July 21st, which is when it was first listed. Angela 19:12, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi jim. I cant see why you had any trouble with grouping together an arrow and a picture. Here's what I tried. I went to europe and right clicked on the picture, then selected copy. I went into word and selected paste, thrn drerw an arrow, rotated it, selected the arrow and the picture and grouped them together. It worked like a charm!

Oh I just thought of something. What version of Word are you using? If it's later than office97 the default formatting for pictures is in line with text rather than wrap around. If that's the case then you need to change it. I'm working from memory here {It's school holidays so I'm not at work}, bit i think you need to right click on the map, select format picture or format object { I forget which}, pick wrapping, then set it to square, {or anything as long as not in line}. Hopefully that should sort it out but if it doesn't then:

Word can't as far as I am aware paste a transparent selection, so you would need to paste just the arrows into an image editor, use the lassoo tool to select just the arrows then paste them as a transparent selection onto the map. { that's what it's called in Paint Shop Pro anyway, you may need to experiment)
A quick 'n dirty hack that's got me out of jam before is to position everything in word as you want it, taking care that the overall size looks good then hit the "print screen" button on the keyboard. This copies the entire contents of the monitor to the clipboard. Paste this into an image editor and crop.

I hope this helps, Theresa knott 22:43, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi Jim! I've put my rather nice Andean Flamingo pic into the taxobox.
I've had a look at Flamingo but I don't know what sort the sleeping flamingos are. So shall I change that pic to another nice pic I have of the Andean Flamingo? I'd be quite happy to do that. Or you might think that sleeping flamingos are cute(!). Either way, let me know what you think.
Adrian Pingstone 16:25, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Jim, I'll illustrate the Greater Flamingo taxobox next (maybe done by the time you read this). The other flamingo pic I have is the Lesser but there's no article for that yet.

Adrian Pingstone 16:48, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I've looked through my remaining duck pics from Slimbridge and there are only three that have no article yet. They are Cereopsis (Cape Barren Goose), Emperor Goose and Swan Goose. I'll keep watch for any article appearing then add in my pic.
Adrian Pingstone 20:58, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that there's one duck I cannot identify. I've really tried, going back and forth through the Slimbridge leaflet of duck pics but nothing remotely matches. I also have just one duck book I bought a few weeks ago but again no match! (Photographic Handbook of Wildfowl of the World by Malcolm Ogilvie and Steve Young, pub by New Holland), a fine book but why doesn't it have my duck!

I don't want to use you as a "duck identification service" so if it's too much work be sure to let me know and I'll send the pic to Slimbridge.

Here it is: Common Eider

Thanks, Adrian Pingstone 21:30, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

? Is there another National Hurricane Center? Why the "US"? --mav 07:54, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I was wondering this myself... While I am quite sure other nations have their own national hurricane/typhoon/etc. centres, I am unaware of any that would have an identical name, especially considering the U.S. would be about the only one to use Center instead of Centre.

Likewise, I'm sure every country has a national meteorological service, but unless another one has the same name as the National Weather Service, it's certainly sufficient and appropriate to leave it without any other prefix (like "US"). --Radiojon 08:05, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Or at least follow the style guide and go for United States National Weather Service. I have been meaning to advise you against "assuming US" in your entries; so far as I've checked your assumptions have about a 20% error rate. If you don't know what country something's from, please don't conjecture. - Hephaestos 08:12, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for adding some info on pardons under the English system, but I wouldn't have thought adding a new subheading catagory would be a minor edit. Alex756

Hi Jim. I'm back! I've just spent 7 complete days travelling the country taking pictures of birds. Or sometimes, just for something different, flowers, shrubs, and landscapes, but mostly birds. Along the way I saw about 150 species, three states, and (I think) 32 species that were completely new to me. Bliss! Nice to see that you are still hard at work. I have photos of many of them, which I'll start uploading over the next week or so, Cheers -- Tannin 15:32, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I've had a look at Albatross (I put the pics in the position you found them) and I think we have an unimprovement (if such a word exists). I had them in a column on the right, you have them on either side of the page with a narrowish gutter of text down the middle. It looks odd on my 1024 by 768 screen and would surely be a very narrow gutter on the 800 by 600 resolution that some people use.
I can't test 800 by 600 because the resolution change would leave all my desktop icons piled up in one corner when I return to 1024 by 768 and it's a pain restoring them all back to position. I won't revert because they're not my pics so I don't have any strong feelings. I'll leave the decision to you, Jim.
Adrian Pingstone 19:59, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Please see the Timeline of video games User talk:Tonius 03:28

re Black-tailed Skimmer: only European? I took that photo in Florida. ^_^ Koyaanis Qatsi 09:14, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No need to apologize. I was just curious if it was new to the country or if the article text was overly restricted. Sometimes species are introduced to non-native countries, as with the kudzu that's taken over most of the southern U.S. and is even considering running for governor of California. Koyaanis Qatsi 13:13, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Dear Jim,

Just a problem I would like to report: yesterday I created a new article about the island Poros. While it is accessible through a wiki link from Greek islands, it is impossible to find it through Search.What could be wrong?

Kostasge 14:22, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Jim. Many more on the way, when I get a spare moment. I think you wil love my White-fronted Chat, which will probably wind up in honeyeater.

I've started work on the birds of prey, Jim. Currently there are about six different entries, none of which agree with any of the others: Falconiformes, Accipitriformes, Accipitridae, Falconidae, Falcon, Bird of prey, Raptor. A major mess! For the sake of simplicity and because it provides a sensible starting point, I'm lumping most of them into Falconiformes (but making appropriate mention of other schemes as I go along). I know we discussed this before and decided to go with 2 orders, but I've reneged as (a) it's easier to write this way, and (b) I gathered that you were not too fussed about the two alternatives. Anyway, feel free to switch it around if you want to. My inclination is to deal with the odd-bods as follows:

Osprey: In its own family, part of Falconiformes. (i.e., the expanded traditional Falconiformes that includes hawks, eagles, Secretary Bird, and the rest.)
New World Vultures: Order Carthartiformes, family Carthartidae. This, at the cost of adding yet another order, provides a compromise between the American grouping of them with the storks, and the rest-of-world grouping of them with the other raptors. (I'm less sure of the wisdom of this, so please let me know what you think. I can easily revert it without loosing any of the other changes.)

Sing out if I tread on your toes with this! Tony

PS: do you have one of your magic species lists for the Falconidae by any chance? -- Tannin

US

You are checking to make sure things you are labling "US" or "American" are actually from the United States, right? --mav 06:12, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Deletion

I've just noticed that you have deleted quite a few things this afternoon that have not been listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion, and which do not fall into any of the 7 classes of articles exempt from being listed, as set out at Wikipedia:Deletion policy. I've undeleted a few pages and listed them on VfD. I think that at least some of them can be salvaged. Please could you read the deletion policy page before deleting anything else? Thanks. If you would like the deletion policy to be changed, please feel free to bring up the matter on Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy. -- Oliver P. 16:13, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

undeletion

Please see wikipedia:votes for undeletion - a user has requested undeletion of some articles on nursery rhymes you deleted - could you respond there? Martin

Ex Post Facto article

I've amended your removal of the reference to the US Constitution. I speak as a Brit too, but I thought it was relevant. See the associated talk page also. -- David Martland 08:45, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

RE: Antidepressants

I don't think it would've reached my intended target had he read it :). He seemed hell-bent on turning every alphabet page into a list of antidepressants despite being asked not to a few times. -- Notheruser 19:20, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)