Talk:Canada jay

message: Article says
:Their breeding habitat is forested areas containing conifers across Canada, Alaska and coastal and montane parts of the western United States.
"Forested areas containing conifers" certainly describes many areas in New York and New England, and the "Canada jays" are well known to hikers in the White Mountains (New Hampshire), where can be seen waiting for handouts, esp'ly at elevations above 3000 feet, and especially at trail junctions and summits. 
:"gray jays" "new england"
gets "199 of about 355" hits on Google, and with a much narrower geographic area
:"gray jays" "white mountains"
"86 of about 185".  I'm adding a nonspecific reference to these two areas, without thorough research that presumably would justify more specific language.--Jerzy•t 22:49, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Breeding areas 

message: The section in this article about the three important questions is super fascinating, but it's not really encyclopedic, and it sounds like original research and needs to be backed up with sources. Wikipedia is not really the right platform for getting your research known to the public... romarin [talk ] 14:03, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Three important questions section 

message: I've added a section on the Canadian Geographic national bird poll that announced its results yesterday and recommended the gray jay as Canada's national bird. The magazine itself and most of the sources covering the announcement are being careful to say that it's Canadian Geographic's recommendation, and has not been adopted in any official capacity by the government. We should not be saying that it is "the national bird", not yet anyway. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:55, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canada's national bird 

message: Back in 2007, User  added a large block of unreferenced prose in this series of edits, in a style more narrative than encyclopedic. It's been tagged as original research since 2009, and as needing references since 2014.
It's most definitely original research: Dan Strickland is a researcher who's made a life out of studying these birds, and added as references five papers he's co-authored on the subject. We can probably consider him a subject matter expert, except he didn't add any inline citations to his work. In the meantime, it looks like other editors have built out the article making inline citations to reliable sources, and now I think this section may be redundant. I'm going to go through and try to clean it up, and am likely going to delete a lot of it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:09, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I had a good look at this over the last few days. Strickland's edit gave the section a focus on certain peculiar behaviours of the gray jay versus general understandings of evolutionary biology. Interesting for sure, but very technical for an encyclopedia, and entirely unreferenced (likely his own work). Other users have used Strickland's papers and other sources to build out the other sections in more general terms over the years, and so Strickland's section has become largely redundant. I used a bit of Strickland's edits in the general section and moved his pictures to other parts of the article, but what was left I've deleted. It's preserved in the article history in case anyone wants to have a look at it, it really is quite interesting, but just not quite a fit for the encyclopedia. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 00:13, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Large unreferenced section 

message: I have assumed that since there was broad consensus to change the title of the article, that there would be broad support to change the variety of English in use in the article to Canadian English, and have boldly done so and will add the banner here. If anyone objects, let's talk about it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:47, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I should say, I assumed there would be consensus because of the result of the move discussion, and because of the bird's cultural significance to Canada. However I can see an argument that UK English should be used instead, because the IOC's list prefers it for birds with colours in their name, but I think that argument is weak because the list prefers American English in some other cases. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:49, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Moved the  banner up above the Article history and the WikiProject banner wrappers, as per Wikipedia:Talk page layout.  Great article, BTW, I've read it a couple times now. – Reidgreg (talk) 17:15, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  ENGVAR change 

message: I've gone ahead and boldly nominated this article as a good article candidate. Although the page has been edited a lot recently and I'm not really a significant contributor, I think that the article is well-written, comprehensive, consistent, reliably sourced and reasonably stable other than the recent changes. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 02:12, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good article nomination 

message: this Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:12, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bookmark 

message: Following up on the recent successful GA promotion, why don't we carry on with a DYK? I've also never done a WP:DYK but it seems straightforward enough. I have a couple ideas for hooks:
* ... that the grey jay builds its nests in late winter, while snow is still deep in the forest? (this image)
* ... that a young grey jay stays with its parents to help care for the next season's fledglings? (this image, I can't find one of a juvenile with its parents)
* ... that the grey jay is also known as whisky jack, a name derived from Wisakedjak, a character in North American indigenous mythology? (this image)
All three of the images have a license which excludes "front-cover texts", which I'm not sure is compatible with DYK. There are other images at :commons:Category:Perisoreus canadensis which could be substituted, or less preferably these could be submitted without images. Any thoughts on these, or other possible hooks? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:54, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: There are definitely some free images. I'd nominate and list all alternatives and let reviewer decide. All are interesting. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:48, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked into it. The "front-cover text" is a component of the license that can specify that certain text is required to be published along with the photo; releasing the photo under this license "with no front-cover texts" means that no such text is required for the image, so it ought to be compatible with the main page. It's compatible with Commons, so I think these are all ok. Submitted; see Template:Did you know nominations/Grey jay. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:34, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  DYK 

message: Be aware there have been multiple attempts to vandalize this article, with the posting of graphic sexual images at the top of the article.BSOleader (talk) 09:04, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I am aware, but what to do about the vandal? seems to be some bot that just reverts edits that delete the picture. tried to report it to anti-vandalism unit, not sure how it works. Can some admin temporarily just close this article and stop all editing?BirgittaMTh (talk) 09:18, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  It appears to be a single editor or two, so I blocked them. WP:AIV is the place to report them in the future. Or WP:RFPP is where to request page protections. Expect more, as usual for the main-page featured article. DMacks (talk) 09:25, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Attempts at Vandalism 

message: This article contains a number of "to.." and "because of .." statements.  Seemingly, researchers have divined the inner workings of the birds' minds, or somebody is engaging in anthropomorphism.  Shouldn't these causation statements at least be changed to correlations (or possibilities instead of definitive facts)?  --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 22:13, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Causation 

message: The intro says: The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considers the grey jay a least-concern species. This uses too much space for the source, to be in the intro. The source/evaluator is not important at all. It is not information about the bird. It is only information about the information about the bird. Pripheral details like that should not be in the intro. The intro is to be short. Here that peripheral appears twice. I have seen the argument that the abbreviation needs to be introduced so that it can be used later. In this case that function does not work. The distance is too long between the occurrences. I have gone through all the FA and GA bird articles. Many do not mention IUCN. Many use the full name and many use only the acronym. Many used both. Taht is too extreme. I changed them. --Ettrig (talk) 21:06, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  IUCN 

message: The American Ornithological Society recently renamed the Grey Jay the Canada Jay, and I suggest we move the article to reflect this change. See: https://amornithnews.org/2018/05/23/name-change-of-gray-jay-back-to-the-original-common-name-of-canada-jay/ Megs (talk) 17:29, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe we normally follow the naming conventions of the IOC, and they have not (yet?) followed suit. It also seems they're due for an update, though. I can see a case for following the American society in this case, since the species is unique to North America, and obviously associated with Canada. CBC and the Globe & Mail are also covering the name change, and it's backed by two prominent ornithologists (one of whom previously contributed much of this article). I don't know, I guess it's worth opening up to a move discussion? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:48, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grey jay is now the Canada Jay 

message: Descriptions of the "Whiskey Jack" appear quite often in Grey Owl's writings and he was quite fond of the bird. How about a subsection that provides some quotations about their behavior from him? Here's an example from The Men of the Last Frontier:
This whiskey-jack is a small bird, about the size of a blackbird, but he has more mischief in his small body than there is in a whole bag of cats. He is a scamp, but a likeable rascal, at that. He mocks the calls of other birds and steals bait, or any small articles left around the camp. He loves human company, and, at the first smoke of a camp-fire, he appears mysteriously from nowhere, like a small grey shadow, and perches on a limb, generally right over the trapper's lunch place, knocking snow down his neck or into the cooking as he lights. He has a foolish little song he whistles which is supposed, no doubt, to charm the hunter into giving him a part of his meal. This he generally gets, but does not eat, carrying it away and cacheing it; so he is never full and stays until the last morsel has disappeared.
 Dsiedler (talk) 10:33, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a featured article; nothing should be added to it without an inline citation to a reliable source. We would need an independent source which shows that Grey Owl's writings about the bird are considered important by literary reviewers, not just that he wrote them. Do you have such a source? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:41, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Understood, thanks. I haven't got such a source. Glad I asked first... Dsiedler (talk) 16:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  New subsection under Relationship with humans: In literature?