A picture of a Ruddy shelduck I took in Moscow, Russia. Ducks are one of my favorite birds. It's always a joy to be around them.
Hello, fellow users of Wikipedia. My name is Zepherite, or just Zeph, and I'm a bird and computer nerd based in Australia. As an editor, I focus on expanding small articles about birds of Australia and New Zealand, and I always try to breathe life into every single page I work on. My love for birds is without bounds, and my love for writing and learning is up there, too. Feel free to contact me and send me articles you feel deserve an update. Be warned, though: I'm a hobbyist, so there may be errors in my work.
If you're curious about what I'm currently working on, you can visit my sandbox. To look through the files that I've uploaded, visit my Wikimedia Commons page.
On a rainy Wednesday in a maternity ward of a Moscow hospital, to no one's surprise but to everybody's sorrow, I was pulled out of my mother's uterus, kicking and crying and full of woe, as that one British saying goes. I didn't get to live in Moscow too long, and, at a very young but no longer innocent age, I moved to the beautiful city of Melbourne to spend the rest of my life in. I never stayed in one place for too long, constantly moving schools and houses throughout my life. The ceiling above my head always changed, the view outside my window wasn't there for enough time to properly commit to memory. So ever since I left the womb, I was always on the move.
That hasn't changed since those days. For one person that may be an issue, for another it might be a dream. For me? As long as there's a ceiling and a window to look out of, I could go wherever. In fact, I think constantly going from place to place gave me an innate ability to find home in the small, unassuming things. Like birds.
Birds are everywhere. It is truly difficult to find a spot on God's green earth that birds haven't made their way to. These flying rascals are unavoidable no matter where you are, which is why they grabbed my attention when I was only a dumb little human. When I still lived in Russia, I loved watching bullfinches outside my window. They would gain a lot of weight for the winter, and I'd always try to look for the fattest one, because it's ridiculous how big they can get. In times of despair and conflict in my family, which has never stopped being a common occurrence, those tiny flying balls of feathers and fluff that would sing their lungs off every morning carried me through some truly dark times.
When I could no longer look for bullfinches, as, sadly, they don't live in the infamously hot Aussie weather, I started looking for other birds. Superb fairywrens, rainbow lorikeets, pink galahs, crested pigeons, among many others whose names I lost to time. Sitting at the back of the school gym with no one around, I would go and hold the chickens that roosted in the school garden. One of which was an old broiler chicken who was constantly covered in dirt. She was obviously a senior, barely walking, always hiding away from the younger kids. I did my damn best to earn her trust, and eventually she would let me hold her for longer than a few blinks of an eye. I fed her my lunches, which were quite horrid to the human tongue, but the grandma hen seemed to like smelly, gross sandwiches my wrench of a mother tried poisoning me with. And during the times where my ill teenage brain led all the mental roads to suicide, that fat, old chicken kept my spirits up.
Since then, I took a more in depth liking to birds. Among my keen interest in all things digital, ornithology and birding grabbed my mind in a chokehold, and to this day, it refuses to let go. Not like I'd want it to, anyways; birds as a whole kept my heart beating for long enough to see another day, during storms and droughts, fights and inpatient stays. Maybe it's a good thing that birds are everywhere; the singing of a songbird can calm you when you're strapped to a hospital bed.
As an avid bird enthusiast, I have always been grateful to live in Australia. It is a country I believe to be the host of the most majestic, unique and breath-taking bird species alive today. But when I search certain articles about these birds on Wikipedia, I've come to notice that they're quite short and under-sourced, with very little information written about the bird in question. As a contributor to Wikipedia, I've made it my goal to expand on those small articles, and add as much information as I can. I tend to avoid editing bigger articles, though; they feel a bit intimidating.
Another thing I focus on when editing articles is adding sources and documentation. The field of ornithology never stays still, with new papers and discoveries being published almost daily. It's important to keep up with this never-ending stream of new information. A lot of articles about Australian and New Zealand birds have been lacking updates for years, which isn't ideal, considering how often things change in this field. Which is why a large focus of my editing style is sourcing new documentation to bird articles that have been left untouched for a while.
Birds are visual creatures. There are two things that one can immediately notice about a bird: their beautiful plumage and their vocalizations. It is difficult to capture their visual beauty in words, especially when it has to be written in an unbiased, academic style Wikipedia is meant to uphold. I don't see that as an issue in itself; rather, I believe that to incite curiosity in onlookers, it is important to provide visual aids that capture people's attention. Pictures, videos, graphs and audio recordings make articles feel more alive and more tangible to the reader, as well as making the article more engaging and interesting to interact with.
Black-fronted dotterel: updated the "distribution and habitat" section and added the "status" section, added multiple references, call audio recording, and distribution map. (April 28, 2025)
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