Is there a reason why all of these basic sightings of House Sparrows are changed to English Sparrow (subspecies) from the majority suggested ID of House Sparrow for many of them? This is happening based on two users adding English Sparrow. Here are a few of many changes within the past hour: http…

Bird subspecies are valid and inevitable in many cases as big part of them are separate species or soon to be, you can’t study birds and avoid subspecies, they have base and even though there can little value of adding nominate ssp. ids, there’s no downside either. All NA sparrows belong to one ssp.…

Thanks all for the responses. There are lot of issues with this. House Sparrow is the common name for this species. I’ve been birding since 1997 and this is first time I’ve ever seen this species in the U.S. referred to as English Sparrow knowing full well that this is an introduced species. Also, …

It might be okay in this instance to use the subspecies for North American populations of this species, if the source was indeed England and only England, even if the refinement seems a little silly. But with other introductions the source or sources might be less clear and a subspecies designation …

Those are not maverick ids, they’re refining ids, they’re not in disagreement with species ids and so of course community taxon changes, hopefully we don’t need 5 ids to get that.

@marina_gorbunova True. I misspoke. But why do 2 refining IDs dominate the 5 IDs related to House Sparrow? This is the point I’ve been trying to make on all the examples in my original post. Thanks.

Reading the above, is the issue: Passer domesticus is called a House Sparrow so Passer domesticus ssp. domesticus should be called Something House Sparrow rather than English Sparrow? Passer domesticus is the dominant kind, so ID should be left as Passer domesticus no subspecies needed? If #1 t…

If there were 5 IDs of “Bird sp” and 2 ID’s of House Sparrow, than it would be considered research grade, and the community ID would be House Sparrow. The same thing is happening here, more specific ID’s always “dominate” less specific ID’s.

@david99 Thanks for the explanation. I think @vreinkymov has it right that the English Sparrow description on the subspecies should change to House Sparrow to avoid confusion but this might break something where people actually talk about the subspecies of House Sparrow which we rarely need to do h…

The name of the species of bird that you’ve documented is still House Sparrow. The subspecies is a narrower taxonomic unit, and each subspecies has a name. The English Sparrow is a House Sparrow just like a human is a type of mammal. There’s nothing incorrect about what you are seeing. Regarding wh…

House Sparrow now English Sparrow subspecies?

General

opisska June 24, 2022, 8:46am 18

I have never before heard anyone use the term “English Sparrow”, despite having been engaged in the largest online community of British (!) birders, so I would really not say this is a “Common” name :)

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House Sparrow now English Sparrow subspecies?

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