Nigrita dohertyi Hartert

LeCroy, Mary, 2013, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 11. Passeriformes: Parulidae, Drepanididae, Vireonidae, Icteridae, Fringillinae, Carduelinae, Estrildidae, And Viduinae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2013 (381), pp. 1-155 : 84-85

Nigrita dohertyi Hartert

Nigrita dohertyi Hartert, 1901d: 12 (‘‘Mau Escarpment,’’ British East Africa, 8500 feet).

Now Nigrita canicapillus diabolicus (Reichenow and Neumann, 1895) . See Hartert, 1919a: 144; Mayr et al., 1968: 310; Dickinson, 2003: 726– 727; Fry and Keith, 2004: 255–257; and Payne, 2010: 306–307.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 727970 , adult male, collected at Escarpment , 8500 ft, Kenya (5 British East Africa), in March 1901 (not 1891, as in Hartert, 1919a: 144), by William Doherty. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description Hartert did not designate a type, saying only that Doherty had collected ‘‘a series’’; four specimens came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection. Hartert (1919a: 144), by noting that the type was a male collected in March at 8500 ft, designated as lectotype the only specimen with those data, now AMNH 727970 . It bears a Rothschild type label. The paralectotypes are: Escarpment, AMNH 727971 , adult male, March 1901, 8000 ft ; AMNH 727972 , adult male, January 1901, 8500 ft ; AMNH 727973 , female, February 1901, 8500 ft.

In his moving memorial to Doherty, Hartert (1901c: 503–504) quoted from Doherty’s letters concerning his whereabouts at the time his last collections were made and ( Hartert, 1902g: 620) made further comments about the ‘‘Escarpment’’ locality. The ‘‘Escarpment’’ of Doherty’s collecting was on the eastern side of the Rift Valley and was not the ‘‘Mau Escarpment,’’ as reported in the original description of this form, which is on the western side. Doherty was in the Kikuyu Mountains near the Escarpment station of the Uganda Railroad at 01.01S, 36.37E ( Polhill, 1988), which was about ‘‘halfway between Ft. Smith (Nairobi) and Naivasha station’’ and was ‘‘in October 1900 the terminus of the railway.’’