Dicaeum monticolum Sharpe, 1887

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 : 115-116

Dicaeum monticolum Sharpe

Dicaeum monticolum Sharpe, 1887: 452 (Kina Balu).

Now Dicaeum monticolum Sharpe, 1887 . See Salomonsen, 1961a: 17–18, Smythies, 2000: 571, and Cheke and Mann, 2008b: 387.

PROBABLE HOLOTYPE: AMNH 697914 , adult male, collected on Mt. Kinabalu , 06.03N, 116.32E (Times Atlas), Sabah, Malaysia [in 1887], by John Whitehead. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: When Sharpe (1887: 452) described this form, Whitehead had not yet returned from Borneo, but had sent ahead to Sharpe one or two specimens of any form that he considered new ( Whitehead, 1893: 185). Sharpe described only the male and gave a single measurement but no further information that would assist in its identification. After Whitehead returned from his 1888 expedition to Kinabalu, Sharpe (1889: 428) reported specimens of this species from both 1887 and 1888 visits. Only a single specimen of this species, a male, was dated 1887. Warren and Harrison (1971) did not report a type of this form in BMNH; and, in fact, a considerable number of Sharpe’s and Ogilvie-Grant’s types based on Whitehead specimens were retained by Whitehead and later sold to Rothschild. In addition to the Rothschild Collection label, the above speci- men bears John Whitehead’s small field label with his unique field number ‘‘966’’ and on the reverse ‘‘descr,’’ in what is probably Whitehead’s hand; it is not initialed by Sharpe. The wing measures 50 mm, which is approximately the 1.95 inches given in the original description. It isn’t possible to be sure that AMNH 697914 was collected on 15 February 1887, or at 4000 ft, which is the altitude at which Whitehead said he first met this bird ( Sharpe, 1889: 428–429); however, a specimen of Arachnothera longirostris collected on 4 March 1887 was numbered ‘‘1059,’’ indicating that no. ‘‘966’’ was collected earlier. This probable holotype of monticolum has been added to the AMNH type collection.

The other two adult specimens and an immature that Sharpe (1889: 428) listed also came to AMNH: AMNH 697915 (Whitehead no. 2368) and AMNH 697925 (2369), male and female, collected on Kinabalu on 1 April 1888, and AMNH 697923 (2322), a female collected on 27 March 1888, the immature described as having the base of the bill yellowish white, a characteristic discernible even in the specimen. AMNH 697924 was collected on Kinabalu on 29 March 1888, but was not listed by Sharpe (1889). None of these 1888 specimens has any standing as a type.