Passer montanus pallidus Zarudny

Lecroy, Mary, 2014, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 12. Passeriformes: Ploceidae, Sturnidae, Buphagidae, Oriolidae, Dicruridae, Callaeidae, Grallinidae, Corcoracidae, Artamidae, Cracticidae, Ptilonorhynchidae, Cnemophilidae, Paradisaeidae, And Corvidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2014 (393), pp. 1-165 : 10-11

Passer montanus pallidus Zarudny

Passer montanus pallidus Zarudny, 1904 (1903) : 262 (eastern Persia).

Now Passer montanus dilutus Richmond, 1895 . See Hartert, 1904: 161; Vaurie, 1949a: 22–26; 1956: 8–19; 1959: 577–578; Moreau and Greenway, 1962: 29; Dickinson, 2003: 717; and Summers- Smith, 2009: 804–805.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 717951 , male, collected at Qūchān (= Kutschan), 37.04N, 58.29E (Times Atlas), eastern Iran (= Persia) on 13 November 1898, by Nicolai Zarudny (no. 4260) ; AMNH 717952 , male, AMNH 717953 , female, Kāfar Qal’eh (= Keafar Kala), 35.53N, 59.21E (Times Atlas), eastern Iran, on 4 April 1896, by Nicoli Zarudny (nos. 1225 and 1211, respectively). From the Rothschild Collection .

COMMENTS: No type was designated in the original description, but Zarudny’s description included not only the specimens collected on his 1898 expedition but also specimens he collected on his 1896 expedition ( Zarudny, 1904: 262, fn. 2). In an earlier paper, he ( Zarudny, 1900: 176–177) had listed a male and two females collected on 4 April 1896 and a female collected on 25 June 1896, which he had indicated were lighter in color but had not named. In 1898, he ( Zarudny, 1904: 262) collected a male on 2 April, a male on 12 April, a male on 24 October, and two males on 13 November. Three of the specimens included in these two papers are in AMNH, two of which had been recognized as syntypes previously ( Vaurie, 1959: 577). The one that had not been recognized previously is AMNH 717951, one of two collected on 13 November 1898. It also bears the number ‘‘23’’ in red ink, of unknown significance. An AMNH type label has been added.

The two Zarudny syntypes that had previously been accepted as syntypes of pallidus by Vaurie (1959: 577) were apparently included by Vaurie (1949: 23–24) in his analysis of dilutus. These bear red nos. 13 and 14 of unknown significance and have field nos. 4041 and 4042 which were crossed out and the numbers listed above substituted. The Rothschild labels on both of these specimens have been marked ‘‘Cotypus v. P. mont. pallid. Zarudny.’’ Hartert did not mention a type of pallidus in any of his lists of types in the Rothschild Collection, and the above specimens bear AMNH type labels in a hand that is not Vaurie’s and that I do not recognize.

Hartert (1904: 161) synonymized pallidus with dilutus and noted that Zarudny’s paper dated 1903 was not actually published until 1904. I much appreciate Boris Zakharov’s translation of Zarundy’s articles, without which I could not have correctly understood the position of the AMNH specimens.