I have the below xml and would like to retrieve its element value without using prefix. I included the default namespace in my xml in the stylesheet but cannot get the root element (Bird) to fire. I even try giving the namespace a name and use prefix to template match the node but it didn’t work. I am getting all text as output. When I remove the default namespace from the input file, it works. I read some of the post on default namespace but didn’t help.
Any suggestions or previous post that would point me to what I need to do will be greatly appreciated.

You need to declare the namespace in the stylesheet with a prefix, and to use this prefix whenever you refer to an element in this namespace in a match pattern or XPath expression.

If you did this and it didn't work, you need to tell us exactly what you did, because you did it wrong.

__________________
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer\'s Reference

Thanks, Kay. I took care of this already. What I was doing wrong was not using the prefix to refer to an element. I am doing that now so it is working properly.