File talk:Bird Diversity 2011.png

good start

This is one of the better composite images for taxoboxes. Might I make some suggestions for improvements?

• The Kiwi is a taxidermy mount, I think another image would be better.
• The uncertain ordinal status of the New World vultures leads me to think that the flight profile of a true hawk or a falcon might be better.
• The hoatzin is looking face on which looks odd in the miniaturised version
• The owl is badly cropped. While losing the bill is maybe acceptable for the penguin, it certainly isn't for the owl with all that empty space above.
• The background of the parrot is unnatural.
• The Roadrunner photo is generally awful, even when bigger. There must be a better cuckoo photo generally. If not, other orders not yet used with featured images include the grebes, petrels, storks and allies, nightjars and allies.

Moreover, while I can see the logic of representative photos at the level of order, it does have the effect of leaving fully half the world bird species represented by a single image. Sabine's Sunbird (talk) 03:26, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Sunbird. Do be aware that this composite represents many hours over two nights of work hunting down, choosing amongst, cropping, and licensing pictures suitable for a composite in which each would be significantly miniaturized. Were this not volunteer work, I would have charged a few hundred euros to do the same. All of your criticisms, and many more occurred to me.

• The Kiwi image was deliberately chosen above the alternatives, all of which were considered, because it displays its remarkable egg. The taxidermy is not unnatural or obvious.
• The uncertain ordinal status of the Andean condor is beside the point, since it in any case does not fall within any of the other orders represented, and it was deliberately chosen as representing the largest flying bird.
• The other hoatzin images were even worse, and I was determined to have a hoatzin.
• The awkward cropping of the owl image is original, not mine. The dozens of other available images I considered were less vivid and of poor orientation for the miniaturized composite. The eyes, not the beak, or the talons, or the cloaca, for that matter, are what makes this animal remarkable.
• I did think about the parrot's situation, but the background of the parrot is irrelevant; this is a composite of bird orders, not aviaries; and in this case helps it stand out much better than it would have against greenery. I considered hundreds of parrot photos. Those who pay attention will realize it also portrays man's relation to the animal.
• "Generally awful" is vague. This image was much less washed out than the others. The roadrunner itself was chosen specifically as a ground predator.
• Yes, I am painfully aware that with 18 images, various orders would be left out.
• While the passerines are numerous, they do not represent great morphological diversity. I considered adding a bird of paradise, and would have killed for a superb bird of paradise, but after two hours of fruitless search could find no free picture which would be clear on a miniaturized scale. Given their cosmopolitan abundance, perching birds are well known to all readers of wikipedia. And had I used two passerines, I would have been criticized for leaving out yet another order.

Believe me, much hard thought was put into representing evolutionary/physiological diversity and choosing amongst alternatives. Not one image was chosen without deliberation. I literally spent hours searching for suitable images. But the number of images available at wikimedia is limited. They are poorly named and categorized. One cannot see an overview of each biological group. Every single image in this composite represents a choice between dozens to hundreds of considered alternatives.

Try looking up bird of paradise. Searching by the key words calls up hundreds of images of the flower, and some of the birds, but only those pictures of the birds categorized in English. A search by the category requires a painstaking link by link search of highly nested and mostly empty categories only to find maybe just one unlikely candidate image after following ten links.

Now repeat this 18 times, and spend the time to crop and fit each image into the overall design, and hunt down the licenses for each, and get back to me in a few days.  :)

Actually, if anyone is interested in improving the project, I suggest he create a second similar composite image comprising taxa that were left out of this image, such as the loons, grebes, storks, cranes, tinamous, kagu, secretary bird, moa, etc., or a composite for the songbirds themselves, rather than duplicating the work done here.

Medeis (talk) 19:31, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

• • I appreciate (and respect) the effort that must have gone into the composite image. In part that is why I generally dislike them, most people don't make the effort and they look awful. And I'm aware of the difficulties of hunting for images - I regularly work on family articles and have to hunt through categories looking for suitable images. Hell, I spent ages hunting down the best images to illustrate the article in question. So, like I said, I'm genuinely impressed. You have made an effort.
  • That said, if your reply was a plea to say "no changes are gonna happen" I reply "no dice". You've made this image to be the principal illustration, the first thing seen, on the most important bird article on the Wiki. The importance of the image is why until now we have always used featured images in that spot, the quality of image reflected the prestige of the spot. Now you've proposed placing a composite image inside, and you've made a great first draft. But it isn't quite good enough, for such an important spot, yet. I know you've spent two day on it, but dude, I, and other editors, spent months on the article itself. Shyamal went through ten drafts to get the beak image inside the article right. So to work this hard, come this far, and then say the first draft is good enough is both wrong and doing yourself a disservice.
  • With respect to your particular points. The kiwi is obviously a mount and is unnatural if you know anything about them. I suppose its subjective whether that matters, but I'd suggest it does. Similarly, I guess the unnatural background of the parrot is a subjective point. I see what you mean about the condor, so that is fine actually. For the roadrunner, did I say "generally awful"? I meant "****ing hideous". Seriously, it is hard to make out what the bird is in the large image. It is almost impossible when it is miniaturised.
  • My point about the other orders was not a dig to say more should have been included, it was that if you can't find better cuckoos or hoatzins or whatever, use them instead. Rather than having a bad hoatzin photo, have a good photo of a albatross. The featured image page of birds has numerous images of these that are good and you can see straight away if they are okay looking when miniaturised. I would argue that [:File:Anas-americana-004.jpg] is better than the swan used, for example, and that the sooty albatross portrait could be used instead of the hoatzin.
  • I repeat, I think this is a really good start. I hope we can make it better. Sabine's Sunbird (talk) 00:31, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know that kiwis do not nest in museums. But there is no picture of a live one in the undergrowth with its egg at wikimedia. The kiwi itself is well preserved and doesn't look like some moth eaten moppet from The British Museum.

Yes, I am sure that just as in the voting paradox, there is some "better" picture of a waterfowl than the swan. There will always be what someone thinks is a better picture.

Again, if you have the motivation to do some creative work, I suggest that rather than tweaking what no one else has complained is problematic, that you apply it where would give better returns, such as finding and uploading a good picture of the kiwi in the field, creating a composite image for the perching birds, or creating a composite image containing the many taxa I did not include in this one. That's my advice for a more profitable way to invest one's effort.

In the meantime, I will hold off on creating a composite for the perching birds, which had been my next intended project, and go do something else.

Medeis (talk) 05:17, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

• So you have no intention of improving the image? Even though it can be improved? So now instead of a fantastic image in the taxobox we have just an adequate one? Freaking great. And why would I want to create another image with the missing orders? Where would it go? Where would I put it? Sabine's Sunbird (talk) 22:25, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

There are 29 orders of modern birds in the Bird navbox, so the caption should not make it sound like there are 18 orders. What about including a fossil bird? Snowman (talk) 10:25, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't care very much about what goes in the bird taxobox—there are plenty of good ways to illustrate the diversity of birds, and there's no perfect way—, but would it be good to have a more representative passerine (a warbler of some sort, for example), and only one ratite, and one raptor or owl? —innotata 23:15, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Too big

This image is too big. I made it smaller, but Line 8 the Pink reverted me. Now, I have noticed that this image is so big that it can take a long time to load on some mobile phones. You do not need 18 images besides, to represent the diversity of birds. Wikimedia Commons should not have such big images like this one. --How come why not (talk) 19:17, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

PS: I noticed no such thing. I got this image confused with Bird Diversity 2013.png. But both images are similar in size, so this problem would occur with both. --How come why not (talk) 19:41, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Line 8 the Pink, if the image is distorted in the projects which it appears in, try purging, editting, or null editting the page. --How come why not (talk) 19:48, 6 July 2016 (UTC)