Pachycephala grisola secedens Stresemann

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 : 14-15

Pachycephala grisola secedens Stresemann

Pachycephala grisola secedens Stresemann, 1913b: 355 (Sirhassen) .

Now Pachycephala cinerea secedens Stresemann, 1913 . See Parkes, 1989: 3, Smythies 2000: 561, Walters, 2003: 106–109, Dickinson, 2003: 475, and Boles, 2007: 415.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 658439 , adult male, collected on Serasan (5 Sirhassen) Island, 02.30N, 109.03E ( USBGN, 1982), South

Natuna Islands, Indonesia, on 21 September 1893 (not 1898), by Alfred Everett. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Stresemann, in the original description of secedens, designated as holotype the only male specimen collected by Everett on Serasan on 21 September 1893. The collection date of 1898 came about from a misreading of Everett’s date and was corrected without comment by Hartert (1920a: 447).

Stresemann’s name was based on the five specimens from Serasan plus two from northwest Borneo and one from Lombok that had the color of the upperparts near that of the Serasan birds, which were said to differ from the nominate subspecies by having the top of the head much darker gray and the back much darker brown. There was nothing on the label of Borneo or Lombok birds to indicate which ones Stresemann considered part of his type series of secedens, and I was unable to decide which they might be. Paratypes from Serasan Island are: AMNH 658438, male collected 20 September; AMNH 658440, female collected 21 September, and AMNH 658441 and 658442, females collected on 22 September, all in 1893 by Everett. Smythies (2000: 561) recognized secedens; Dickinson (2003: 475) and Boles (2007: 415) did not. Comparison of specimens of secedens from Serasan with specimens of the nominate race in AMNH indicates that secedens is recognizable.

In his recent paper, Walters (2003) argued convincingly for Pachycephala cinerea (Blyth, 1847) as the valid name of this species.