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Iberian Chiffchaff (1 Viewer)

John Cantelo said:
I've just read through the text in Opus for the first time and suggest it needs several caveats regarding some of the details. I feel that ought to be a warning that the description applies to 'typical' birds in fresh clean plumage and that some birds may be virtually indistinguishable on plumage alone from brighter Chiffchaffs. Similarly, it ought to be clear that juvs are not safely separable from Common. Certainly, it does not seem to "move short distances to lower levels, usually in valleys and along Mediterranean coast" in winter. However, I really don't want to tread on any toes here .....
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Thanks for that John, when I researched the article I found that it wasn't particularly clear on several points. Normally, European species are really well documented, hence my appeal for discussion. I was hoping to get yours and Simons opinion amonst others, as you are the guys with real life experience from living where this species does. Discussing a freshly produced article on the discussion page is wholely appropriate and most welcome.
The feeling I got from my research was that much of the confusion has come from birders living outside the normal range of this species, confusing species and not fully understanding the usual migration pattern, in that they confuse the local winter with the UK winter, thus a sighting in late February means, to them, that it overwinters where in fact it has just returned.

Any discussion here is certainly not stepping on anyones toes.
 
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Simon Wates said:
Andy, after reading the habitat section I thought it could be a bit clearer – so I’ve put together on my take on Ib Chiff’s habitat in the Algarve (please feel free to use and edit as necessary Andy) – maybe others could comment on habitats further north in Portugal? I’ve seen it sometimes in breeding season in near pure pine woodland in central eastern Portugal IIRC.

In the Algarve breeding areas are found primarily inland, nearly always on shale substrate of the “Serras” and is practically absent on the more coastal limestone “Barrocal”, where oaks (except Kermes Oak Quercus coccifera) are very localised. Iberian Chiffchaffs is a woodland bird, favouring areas with at least a small representation of Cork Oak Quercus suber and often in pure Cork Oak forest and woodland. It is particularly common along valley bottoms in these areas along woodland galleries consisting of Cork Oak, Willows (Salix atrocinerea, S. australis), White Poplar Populus alba and sometimes Alder Alnus glutinosa. These habitats often include other native trees/shrubs like Phyllrea angustifolia, Strawberry Tree Arbutus unedo, Viburnum tinus and others. Areas of Cork Oak with mixed Pines Pinus pinea, P.maritumus are freely used as are areas affected with Eucalyptus plantations, although on edges where Cork Oaks are nearby. Iberian Chiffchaff is much less catholic in its choice of breeding habitat than Common Chiffchaff and is fact quite a habitat specialist. In the Algarve it doesn’t breed in gardens, town parks, tourist development gardens, golf courses or in coastal agricultural areas, orchards etc. In these areas it is found mainly on autumn passage (July)Aug-Sep(Oct) with spring migrants being much less numerous. Interestingly, a little north of the Algarve in the Baixo Alentejo it doesn’t seem to breed at all in the vast open Cork Oak and Holm Oak woodlands, which are rich in birdlife. In that region it occurs mainly and often commonly in the cooler Atlantic western woodlands with dense understory.
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Thanks a lot Simon, this is excellent. I will take you up on your kind offer and make use of your work.
 
Nutcracker said:
I do a fair bit of wiki editing so spot them a mile off :t:

Birdforum's Opus is based on wiki software, it uses the same markup and formatting, etc., as wikipedias.
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Although articles have been sourced from wikipedia in the past, I personally don't use it. I rely on more bird related sources like HBW Alive, which is continually being updated.

Please be careful in future to check the history of an arcticle and if it is very new, it may still be a work in progress, as is the case with this article and indeed the discussion thread. Nobody will be annoyed if you start a discussion on an article, as I did for reasons that have already been covered in replies from John and Simon. This is what the discussion page is there for.

Waiting for someone else to do the work and then correct their work comes over at best as a lack of respect for other people's efforts on behalf of Opus and seems to be a thing you make a habit of doing.

Perhaps, in future you might consider checking the history of an article and if you disagree with what has been written, you could start a discussion in the appropriate place. I for one would welcome any discussion on any work that I have done. New and local knowledge can only inprove our efforts in making Opus as good as we possible can.
 
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I have made changes wrt John and Simon's contributions. Thanks again for that. The article is now a lot clearer for it.
 
Andy Hurley said:
Although articles have been sourced from wikipedia in the past, I personally don't use it. I rely on more bird related sources like HBW Alive, which is continually being updated.
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That is not what I was talking about. I was referring to wiki formatting and markup. As in Opus's own Help page. Not copying text from English Wikipedia.

Andy Hurley said:
Please be careful in future to check the history of an arcticle and if it is very new, it may still be a work in progress, as is the case with this article and indeed the discussion thread. Nobody will be annoyed if you start a discussion on an article, as I did for reasons that have already been covered in replies from John and Simon. This is what the discussion page is there for.

Waiting for someone else to do the work and then correct their work comes over at best as a lack of respect for other people's efforts on behalf of Opus and seems to be a thing you make a habit of doing.

Perhaps, in future you might consider checking the history of an article and if you disagree with what has been written, you could start a discussion in the appropriate place. I for one would welcome any discussion on any work that I have done. New and local knowledge can only inprove our efforts in making Opus as good as we possible can.
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Not at all. It is how wikis work: you, and I, and every Opus contributor, should expect people to review their work and correct any errors, at any time as soon as it is added. Please remember what it says at the foot of the Edit box on editing any page:

Please note that all contributions to Opus may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then don't submit it here.
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Bear in mind, the 'Recently updated pages' is an open invitation to all contributors to read those pages, see errors or omissions, and add corrections and/or extra details as they see fit. And ditto the 'Featured Article' (I have just looked at that, and see a number of major additions / updates that it needs - the chances of my randomly looking at the Common Bulbul article are otherwise minimal). It is ridiculous to imply that no-one should edit an article until some specified number of days / weeks / months have elapsed since a previous edit so that the previous editor won't feel 'lack of respect'. On other wikis, patrolling of recent edits is a standard proceedure that is encouraged, not railed against.

Andy Hurley said:
Any discussion here is certainly not stepping on anyones toes.
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Starting a discussion page for corrections is actually a far greater intrusion into someone's editing: it is a very much more visible criticism about the content of an article. Much better just to quietly edit the page and put brief details in the edit summary, particularly when dealing with typos and other minor formatting errors. Starting discussion pages are more suited to (a) when an Opus editor is requesting assistance to locate information they don't have access to themselves, or (b) if an edit war has started on an Opus page.

Andy Hurley said:
I have made changes wrt John and Simon's contributions. Thanks again for that. The article is now a lot clearer for it.
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You missed the corrections I made to their contribution in post #15:
  • The second pine mentioned is Pinus pinaster (see also post #16, confirming this)
  • "(July)August-September(October)" is missing some spacing; should be "(July) August-September (October)"
  • "doesn’t" (2x in the paragraph) is fine in a forum post, but too colloquial for formal text in something like Opus; it is better given as "does not" (but if retained, should be with a straight apostrophe "doesn't", not a curly one).
Normally, I would just go and make these minor corrections to the Opus article myself to avoid potential embarrassment to Simon, but in view of your decidedly officious and demeaning public comments about my Opus editing above, I now feel the (absurd) requirement to mention them here to have them certified by yourself as being acceptable (or not).
 
Thank you for your input, Nutcracker, but please blame me and not Simon. I did incorporate your corrections manually and the faults are all mine.
 
Thanks, Andy!

On the vent colour, I guess I was wrong with 'dark yellow', but I'm not convinced 'lemon yellow' is right either (despite its being from HBW Alive) - it isn't the same vivid yellow as a lemon, or the other widely-cited 'lemon yellow' in a related bird, a Pallas's Leaf Warbler's rump. Can you think of a better term to use here?
 
Nutcracker said:
Thanks, Andy!

On the vent colour, I guess I was wrong with 'dark yellow', but I'm not convinced 'lemon yellow' is right either (despite its being from HBW Alive) - it isn't the same vivid yellow as a lemon, or the other widely-cited 'lemon yellow' in a related bird, a Pallas's Leaf Warbler's rump. Can you think of a better term to use here?
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Would something like 'washed with lemon yellow' tone it down sufficiently?
 
Nutcracker said:
You missed the corrections I made to their contribution in post #15:
  • The second pine mentioned is Pinus pinaster (see also post #16, confirming this)
  • "(July)August-September(October)" is missing some spacing; should be "(July) August-September (October)"
  • "doesn’t" (2x in the paragraph) is fine in a forum post, but too colloquial for formal text in something like Opus; it is better given as "does not" (but if retained, should be with a straight apostrophe "doesn't", not a curly one).
Normally, I would just go and make these minor corrections to the Opus article myself to avoid potential embarrassment to Simon, but in view of your decidedly officious and demeaning public comments about my Opus editing above, I now feel the (absurd) requirement to mention them here to have them certified by yourself as being acceptable (or not).
Click to expand...

Not embarrassing at all - I'm very happy to have any of my errors corrected.

But....the way it happened was a little annoying I must admit :-C

You see - I wrote the little piece on habitat of the cuff, spontaneously so to speak - with no checking up on anything, like plant scientific name spelling etc. In my mind I was writing on a forum, not paid work for a publication. I'd meant to include a comment about altitude and some other details - I was going to add more but when I saw the distractions it threw me off.

All the errors/typos that you noticed (and there are one or two more:-O) I would have spotted on a re-visit to my text - except the hyphenated Strawberry-tree. I'm fully aware about Maritime Pine scientific name for example - I've written that down/spoke it 100's of times - just a silly mistake in a hurry. Its only a minor gripe really and maybe I'm over sensitive but I was peeved that I couldn't have a chance to check my text myself first! 20 mins after I'd posted you had done the editing. This is all very well but I would have preferred some comment about the contents rather than just the typos etc (which to be fair were not abundant).

Next time I write here maybe I will make sure I let my writing sit with me a couple of days first to be able to check it with fresh eyes. That way we can all concentrate on fine-tuning and finishing the Opus article together.

Anyway - I just think you could be less heavyweight - it does feel that you sort of pounce straight on with the editing. It is not the most important thing, the content is. Of course, its nice to get things word perfect but please don't hack it to bits straight away - its a bit insensitive, distracting and comes over as pretty harsh critique. I'm sure if you had hurried writing something similar without editing there would be errors. If someone immediately started correcting spacing next to brackets and other obvious things it may make you feel unsettled.

Regarding habitat it would be great to have input from folk who live/know the details in other parts of its range. This varies considerably regarding tree species especially - a subject that you are rather knowledgable in.

Good - got that of my chest, sorry all :-O
 
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dantheman said:
Never knew Iberian Chiffchaffs could be so interesting ... ( ;) )
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yes - perhaps a little too "interesting" :gh:

Here's a few photos I've searched that convey Iberian Chiffchaff's field character a little more than some - at least to me:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mago62/19863397178/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmittermeier/16730684084/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajmguerra/2796212464/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/portugalonweb/10224827145/

and one in the hand: https://www.flickr.com/photos/juliomneto/4938054133/
 
Simon Wates said:
Not embarrassing at all - I'm very happy to have any of my errors corrected.

But....the way it happened was a little annoying I must admit :-C

You see - I wrote the little piece on habitat of the cuff, spontaneously so to speak - with no checking up on anything, like plant scientific name spelling etc. In my mind I was writing on a forum, not paid work for a publication. I'd meant to include a comment about altitude and some other details - I was going to add more but when I saw the distractions it threw me off.

All the errors/typos that you noticed (and there are one or two more:-O) I would have spotted on a re-visit to my text - except the hyphenated Strawberry-tree. I'm fully aware about Maritime Pine scientific name for example - I've written that down/spoke it 100's of times - just a silly mistake in a hurry. Its only a minor gripe really and maybe I'm over sensitive but I was peeved that I couldn't have a chance to check my text myself first! 20 mins after I'd posted you had done the editing. This is all very well but I would have preferred some comment about the contents rather than just the typos etc (which to be fair were not abundant).

Next time I write here maybe I will make sure I let my writing sit with me a couple of days first to be able to check it with fresh eyes. That way we can all concentrate on fine-tuning and finishing the Opus article together.

Anyway - I just think you could be less heavyweight - it does feel that you sort of pounce straight on with the editing. It is not the most important thing, the content is. Of course, its nice to get things word perfect but please don't hack it to bits straight away - its a bit insensitive, distracting and comes over as pretty harsh critique. I'm sure if you had hurried writing something similar without editing there would be errors. If someone immediately started correcting spacing next to brackets and other obvious things it may make you feel unsettled.

Regarding habitat it would be great to have input from folk who live/know the details in other parts of its range. This varies considerably regarding tree species especially - a subject that you are rather knowledgable in.

Good - got that of my chest, sorry all :-O
Click to expand...

B :)B :)
 
Looked up my Iberian Chiffchaff records from Morocco/Western Sahara - unfortunately mid February so probably migrating through presumably ... (and the one near Marseille was mid-March!)
 
John Cantelo said:
Excellent, Simon. I lack your botanical skills but would add that in the Alcornocales they seem to like sheltered canutos and the surrounding open oak woodland.
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Thanks John. I've add this to the article, sorry about overlooking it first time around. The thread has become quite long is all I can offer as an excuse:smoke:
 
dantheman said:
Looked up my Iberian Chiffchaff records from Morocco/Western Sahara - unfortunately mid February so probably migrating through presumably ... (and the one near Marseille was mid-March!)
Click to expand...

Thanks Dan, I've added your records to Movement.
 
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