Hee, I love the Pennsylvania detail. EVerything goes back into detail, to the point where the names "Penn" and "Pitt" are broken down... and then Scranton is exactly the same!

ASB, do tits say "chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee"?

Most of the ones in the genus Poecile have some variation on that, and oher genera do make somewhat similarish calls.

Wikipedia says that Australasian parrots aren't "true parrots", meaning cockatoos, keas, kakas and kakapos. I'm not really sure what "true parrot" means, since they've still got two toes facing forward and backwards on each foot, hooked bills, and a diet consisting largely of fruit and nuts (with the exception of keas, which will eat anything not nailed down).

I mean, the Australasian parrots were meant to have branched off the evolutionary tree some time back, but who's to say that makes them not "true parrots"? Isn't that like saying an orangutan isn't a true ape?

Well, whatever you do, don't tell the Librarian that.

You missed Oxford, which is also unchanged.

I thought I'd spotted another one in 'Kingston', but a bit of investigation revealed that this is actually Hull. If Hull's proper name is Kingston, though, shouldn't it be written 'King's Town' on this map?

Hull's present name in full is 'Kingston-upon-Hull'. But yes, I'd have expected this map to render it as King's Town.

I've been trying to get Wikipedia to change "true parrot" to "typical parrot" (I'm an admin there but consensus rules the day). The answer is that all parrots were once treated as a single family, Psittacidae, and were the only family in the order Psittaciformes. More recently it was decided that the cockatoos were distinct enough from all other parrots to merit their own family, Cacatuidae. Then phylogenetic analysis found that the keas, kakas and kakapos of New Zealand were a lineage that split off from the basal parrots easily as long ago, so they were split out too, and called the Nestoridae. Modern taxonomy is heavily reliant not on morphological similarities or differences but on how long ago lineages split. The New Zealand parrots are a separate family not because they look particularly different from other parrots but because they split off from other parrots a really long time ago. I should note that Australia and New Zealand have other parrots that are still retained in the Psittacidae (the budgie being the most famous example).

I think I agree with angrysunbird on the parrot "true" vs. "typical" problem. How does one go about determining which branch of birds are "true" with any degree of accuracy? If they all have a common ancestry than it only makes sense to refer to them all as parrots, wouldn't it?

Hmmm. About all I know about birds is how to flip one...

True is better used in names when you are distinguishing between unrelated groups, for example a true thrush would be a member of the thrush family, as opposed to the inaccurately named New Zealand thrush which is... well no one is sure but maybe a bowerbird. If it wasn't extinct.

Just open up the ini file and check if parrot==1.

I prefer the DCI’s highly scientific method of accurately identifying anything out of a general pool.

On the topic of birds, probably my favorite call of all the one's near me is the Carolina Wren. If you use your imagination a bit, you can totally hear John Belushi going "CHEEBURGER CHEEBURGER CHEE!"