Aethopyga seheriae tonkinensis Hartert

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 : 150-151

Aethopyga seheriae tonkinensis Hartert

Aethopyga seheriae tonkinensis Hartert, 1917a: 7 (Yen-bai, Tonkin).

Now Aethopyga siparaja tonkinensis Hartert, 1917 . See Dickinson, 2003: 713, and Cheke and Mann, 2008a: 313–314.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 686463 , adult male, collected at Yen-Bai, 21.43N, 104.54E (Times Atlas), Tonkin, Viet Nam, on 8 September (not November) 1911, by S. Tchuchiya. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Hartert noted that the type was collected on ‘‘ 8.xi.1911 ’’ at Yen-Bai and that he had two males that had been sent to him by Nagamichi Kuroda. Both specimens were collected at Yen-Bai in September (‘‘ix’’ not ‘‘xi’’). Hartert apparently misread the Roman numeral for the month of collection. AMNH 686463 is the specimen dated 8 September 1911, the day of the month given for the type in the original description ; an AMNH type label has been added to this specimen. Kuroda has written on the reverse of his label: ‘‘Notes: somewhat larger ; nape brownish with olive margin to the feathers. See my paper p. 250.’’ ( Kuroda, 1917).

Both specimens had originally been dated 8/ix 1911. On AMNH 686462 , the ‘‘8’’ had been marked out and a ‘‘7’’ added in ink similar to that used on the rest of the original label ; the correction appears to have been made by the collector. It is on this specimen that Hartert has written ‘‘(Type)’’ and ‘‘ tonkinensis Hart.’’ on the front of the Kuroda label and a reference to the original description of tonkinensis on the reverse. It bears a Rothschild type label. Later when he ( Hartert, 1920a: 425) listed the type of this form, it seems that he depended on the presence of the Rothschild type label and listed without comment the type of tonkinensis as the specimen collected on 7 September 1911. That specimen, AMNH 686462 , is the paratype of tonkinensis. Because it bears a Rothschild type label, it is retained in the AMNH type collection, but with an added label to indicate its paratype status .

In his article on a collection of birds from Tonkin, Kuroda (1917: 217) noted that his specimens were collected by S. Tsuchiya (so spelled by Kuroda) in 1911–1912 for T. Kobayashi and were given to Kuroda for examination. Some of the specimens had subsequently passed into Kuroda’s collection. Kuroda (1917) listed eight males and two females from Yen-Bai, but because he had sent only two males to Hartert, the others are not part of the original type series.