Dicaeum aeneum becki Hartert, 1929

Pachycephalidae, Aegithalidae, Remizidae, Paridae, Sittidae, Neosittidae, Certhiidae, Rhabdornithidae, Climacteridae, Dicaeidae, Pardalotidae, Nectariniidae, And & Lecroy, Mary, 2010, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 8. Passeriformes:, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2010 (333), pp. 1-178 : 112-113

Dicaeum aeneum becki Hartert

Dicaeum aeneum becki Hartert, 1929: 9 (Guadalcanar) .

Now Dicaeum aeneum becki Hartert, 1929 . See Salomonsen, 1960c: 33, Mayr and Diamond, 2001: 396, and Cheke and Mann, 2008b: 384– 385.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 220114 , adult male, collected on Guadalcanal (5 Guadalcanar) Island, Solomon Islands, on 22 July 1927, by Joe Hicks , on the Whitney South Sea Expedition (no. 26848).

COMMENTS: Hartert was sent a selection of specimens from various Solomon Islands when he wrote this paper on Whitney Expedition birds ; therefore, he did not have the entire collection before him. As the type of becki he listed a male specimen from ‘‘Guadalcanar’’ collected on 22 July 1927 by Hicks. AMNH 220114 bears those data and is labeled ‘‘ Dicaeum aeneum becki ’’ and ‘‘Type’’ by Hartert. In addition, he colored the end of the field label red. An AMNH type label was added later, when the specimens were cataloged. Besides the type, Hartert had one female from Tulagi and a male and a female from Guadalcanal. Only the three specimens labeled becki by Hartert , from among the large series collected, match the data he provided in the original description, and I consider them the paratypes: AMNH 218213 , adult male, collected on Guadalcanal on 14 May 1927 by Hicks ; AMNH 218230 , female, collected on Tulagi Island on 23 May 1927 by Hicks ; AMNH 220121 , female, collected on Guadalcanal on 18 July 1927 by F.P. Drowne .

R.H. Beck (unpublished journal D, archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH) noted that on 14 July [1927] the Whitney Expedition vessel, France, was moved to ‘‘a bay near Cape Hunter, and I went eastward to the big river…’’ This is the Itina (or Ithina) River, 09.48S, 159.51E (USBGN, 1974). From there Beck, accompanied by David and Hicks (crew from the France), and later by Ida Beck, went into the mountains. Between 20 and 28 July they collected as high as 4000 ft. Frederick Drowne remained at sea level.