Sitta rupicola Blanford, 1873

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 : 82-83

Sitta rupicola Blanford

Sitta rupicola Blanford, 1873: 87 (in montibus Persicis praesertim in Elburz saxa scopulosque frequentans).

Now Sitta neumayer rupicola Blanford, 1873 . See Vaurie, 1950b: 25, Mlíkovsky´, 2007: 106–107, and Harrap, 2008b: 141.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 683968 , [immature] male, collected in the Karīj Valley , 6500 ft, Alborz (5 Elburz) Mountains, 36.00N, 53.00E ( USBGN, 1956b), northern Iran (5 Persia, as on label), 9 August 1872, by W.T. Blanford (no. 572). From the Indian Museum via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Blanford did not designate a type in the original description, saying only that he had four specimens from the Elburz Mountains, one from Kohrúd, and one from near Shiraz. When Blanford (1876: 225–227) wrote about this species in his larger work, he gave Lura Valley, Elburz Mountains, as the collecting locality of his four specimens; but again no type was designated. Hartert (1920a: 440) in turn quoted the collecting locality of the lectotype as ‘‘Lura Valley,’’ evidently following that given in Blanford (1876), but the locality on the label is Karīj Valley.

Buxton (1920: 136) exhibited two of Blanford’s syntypes at a meeting of the British Ornithologists’ Club; by stating that he considered the specimen in the Rothschild Collection to be the type because it was marked as the specimen illustrated, he designated it the lectotype. Hartert (1920a: 440) listed this same specimen, no. 572, as the type, and he noted the following:

Blanford never noticed that his types were juvenile birds, and he mixed up his rupicola of North Persia with S. neumayer tschitscherini of Isfahán and Shiráz. The type specimen is marked on the label by Blanford: ‘‘typefigured specimen, Ibis 1873 , p. 87,’’ and on the back of the label ‘‘specimen-figured Zoology of Persia.’’… The type specimen has been in the Indian Museum, but was made a ‘‘duplicate’’ and thus came into our hands.

The specimen was illustrated in Blanford (1876: pl. 15, fig. 2); it was not illustrated in the Ibis article.

One paralectotype is in BMNH ( Buxton, 1920 [May]: 136). Warren and Harrison (1971: 482) were mistaken in saying that there were four (rather than six) specimens listed in the original description, and they did not refer to Buxton’s designation of the lectotype. However, had Buxton not designated a lectotype, then Hartert’s (1920a [November]: 440) listing of the type with Blanford’s unique field number would have so served, contra Warren and Harrison (1971: 482). The whereabouts of the other four paralectotypes is unknown; perhaps they are in the ‘‘Indian Museum,’’ now the Zoological Survey of India.

In addition to the Rothschild type and Blanford labels, the lectotype also bears an Indian Museum label, Reg. no. 10062, and on the reverse, no. 3.16.2.78. Mlíkovský (2007: 93) noted that Blanford’s specimens from the Karīj Valley were probably collected at Dar Deh (5 Dardeh), 35.38N, 52.46E (USBGN, 1956b). Mlíkovský gave the coordinates instead as 36.02N, 51.26E, but did not give his source, and I cannot explain the discrepancy.