Austrartamus melanops Normani Mathews

Austrartamus melanops Normani Mathews, 1923b: 255 (Normanton, Gulf of Carpentaria).

Now Artamus cinereus normani (Mathews, 1923) . See Mathews, 1930: 637; Mayr, 1962b: 164–165; Mees, 1982: 160–165; Storr, 1984: 170; Schodde and Mason, 1999: 565–567; Dickinson, 2003: 464; and Rowley and Russell, 2009b: 307.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 665020, adult male, collected at Normanton, 17.40S, 141.05E (Times Atlas), Queensland, Australia, on 29 November 1913, by Robin Kemp (no. 3542). From the Mathews Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: The original description reads: ‘‘The bird figured and described on p. 246, from Normanton, Gulf of Carpentaria, can be called Austrartamus melanops Normani, subsp. n. ’’ AMNH 665020, in addition to Kemp’s label, a Rothschild Museum label printed ‘‘Ex. Coll. G.M. Mathews,’’ and a Rothschild type label, also bears a Mathews’ ‘‘Figured’’ label. The specimen appears as the middle figure in Mathews (1923b: pl. 477, opp. p. 244), labeled Austrartamus cinereus . Kemp’s label data and the measurements written by Mathews on the reverse of Kemp’s label agree with those published for the type by Mathews (1923b: 246). Specimens collected in 1913 and 1914 by Kemp were only partly cataloged by Mathews; this specimen was not.

See Mees (1982: 160–165) and Schodde and Mason (1999: 565–567) for a review of the complicated history of the nomenclature of A. cinereus and the latter for use of normani as the valid name for the northeast Queensland population.