Thick-billed Parrot (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha)

What a wonderful find for you Glen!!! A lovely pair too.

I've now uploaded this, and the flight picture to the Opus article. Many thanks for sharing them with us lad.

I've also updated the Opus page, but wonder if you know something about them that isn't mentioned there, which you can add.

Superb capture of those Thick-billed Parrots Glen, tfs.

Another great shot of this pair Glen, TFS!

They look beautiful. Great shot, Glen.

delia todd said:

What a wonderful find for you Glen!!! A lovely pair too.

I've now uploaded this, and the flight picture to the Opus article. Many thanks for sharing them with us lad.

I've also updated the Opus page, but wonder if you know something about them that isn't mentioned there, which you can add.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the comments. I looked at the Opus account for this species, and I think the most important thing to add is that this species is listed as endangered by IUCN, Birdlife International and the U.S. Endangered Species Act. My inclination would be to add external links to the species accounts by those three sources, but I am not clear on what BirdForums's policy is regarding external links in Opus accounts.

Thanks Glen. I'll look into this. The main issue is that of keeping such information up to date really.

It causes on-going discussions, with no solution really found for the issue so far.

delia todd said:

Thanks Glen. I'll look into this. The main issue is that of keeping such information up to date really.

It causes on-going discussions, with no solution really found for the issue so far.

Click to expand...

I understand the problem. I put links to species accounts on the sites of IUCN, Birdlife, USFWS and other conservation orgs on the species pages on my Pbase gallery, and spend a lot of time updating them when the URLs change or are deleted (e.g., Audubon's Watchlist species accounts). And sometimes the status changes, usually for the worse, e.g., from Threatened to Endangered, so even if the URL is still good, the text on the page specifying the status is out of date. But trying to draw attention to bird conservation issues is one of the main reasons I post bird photos on-line, so ignoring conservation status because it generates work is not a good solution for me. I can't commit the time to keep conservation status and links in Opus accounts up to date, so I will refrain from adding them unless you suggest otherwise.

Thanks Glen. I don't really know what to say.

It's really not that we don't want them, I just can't commit someone to having to update them. I mean... how much long will I be able to do anything. At 79, who knows what's round the corner for me. I could be bright as a spark for another 20 years but... however, before then maybe a solution could be found to this conundrum.

To clarify, when I said ignoring conservation status because it generates work is not a good solution for me, it was referring to my Pbase site, not to Opus. And I'm not pushing for Opus to add links to conservation status because the links are a real pain in the arse to maintain. A few years ago, either IUCN or Birdlife, don't remember which, or maybe both, changed the format of URLs for search results, which created hundreds of bad links on my site. Audubon and American Bird Conservancy used to have species account pages for Watch List species, to which I also linked, then both orgs deleted their species accounts for some reason, creating hundreds more bad links. I'm a mere child of 66, but I fear I will never get all the links up to date.

It may be possible to create a link that uses an API to search the IUCN or Birdlife sites and return the results, rather than linking directly to the search results. In other words, a search formula that takes the common or scientific name of the species from the Opus account, enters in the search box at The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and/or BirdLife Data Zone, and displays the result of the search of the IUCN/Birdlife database. That should reduce bad links if the URLs for those sites' search pages are more stable than the URLs of the search results, which I think is the case. But writing such a search formula is far beyond my tech skills.

A possible compromise would be a text-only line (no link) in Opus accounts like "As of November 2023, this species is listed as Endangered by IUCN and BirdLife International, and under the U.S. Endangered Species Act." If the status were to change in the future, that statement would still be accurate because of the date referenced in the statement, so updating the statement to the new status would be good, but not essential. And one could argue that a dated reference to the conservation status is better than no reference.

Another way to limit the impact on Opus editors would be to use such statements only for species that are rated Critically Endangered or Endangered, and not for species rated Threatened or Vulnerable, simply to reduce the number of species that Opus editors need to pay attention to.

Just some ideas. Since I don't have the time to implement them myself, I certainly don't expect you or other Opus editors to do it.