Cardinalis phoeniceus Bonaparte, 1838

LeCroy, Mary, 2012, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 10. Passeriformes: Emberizidae: Emberizinae, Catamblyrhynchinae, Cardinalinae, Thraupinae, And Tersininae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2012 (368), pp. 1-125 : 55

Cardinalis phoeniceus Bonaparte

Cardinalis phoeniceus (Gould MS) Bonaparte, 1838: 111 (received by Mr. Gould from the country south of the Bay of Honduras).

Now Cardinalis phoeniceus Bonaparte, 1838 . See Hartert, 1919: 155, Hellmayr, 1938: 74–75, and Dickinson, 2003: 823.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 515537 , unsexed [male], collected in ‘‘the country south of the Bay of Honduras,’’ undated. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Hartert (1919: 155) claimed that this specimen was the type of Bonaparte’s name, based on a name written by Gould on the specimen in the collection of the Zoological Society of London but never published by Gould. There is no longer a label on the specimen indicating this, the earliest label being that of T.C. Eyton, who has written on his label that the specimen was from ‘‘Honduras’’ and came to him from the Zoological Society of London. He has also annotated it ‘‘or. of Bonaparte description.’’ On the reverse, Hartert has documented the history of the specimen: Coll. Zool. Soc., Mus. T.C. Eyton, Coll. E. Bartlett, and to the Rothschild Collection and added ‘‘This is type, NOT the one in B.M. (E.H.).’’ This was accepted by Warren and Harrison (1971: 434).

Bonaparte named the genus Cardinalis at this time, and in the original description named two new species of the genus, both of which ‘‘come from Mexico.’’ The entire description of C. phoeniceus was as follows: ‘‘A small but most splendid species, received by Mr. Gould from the country south of the Bay of Honduras.’’ There is no indication that the specimen was ever in Gould’s private collection, but he certainly might have annotated a specimen in the Zoological Society of London collection while he was working there.

The reverse of Eyton’s label bears the number ‘‘3.a.’’ and there is a small circular tag bearing the number ‘‘1501’’; the significance of these numbers is unknown. The correct collecting locality was probably Venezuela ( Hellmayr, 1938: 74). The specimen was formerly mounted.