Aegithaliscus anophrys Swinhoe, 1868

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 : 61

Aegithaliscus anophrys Swinhoe

Aegithaliscus anophrys Swinhoe, 1868: 64 (Tingchow mountains).

Now Aegithalos concinnus concinnus (Gould, 1855) . See Swinhoe, 1871: 362, Eck and Martens, 2006: 4–5, Dickinson et al., 2006: 69, and Harrap, 2008a: 96–97.

SYNTYPE: AMNH 682834, unsexed [immature], collected in the Tingchow mountains, Fujian Province, China, in August 1867, by collectors for Robert Swinhoe. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Swinhoe did not say how many specimens he had, describing the adult, ‘‘full-grown young,’’ and noting that he had ‘‘two partially moulted, showing the change from the immature into the adult.’’ The syntype in AMNH is one of the two immatures molting into adult plumage. There are four syntypes in BMNH ( Warren and Harrison, 1971: 30) and one in RMNH ( Dekker and Quaisser, 2006: 11). Swinhoe (1868: 62) further elaborated on the locality at which his collectors obtained specimens, calling it ‘‘the high ‘Black-Tea range’—about 120 miles northeast from Amoy,’’ 24.26N, 118.07E (Times Atlas), and noted that they returned with specimens in the third week of August. The letter in which this new form is named is dated ‘‘ 18 September 1867,’’ wherein Swinhoe noted that he intended to send collectors back into the same mountains. I think that Swinhoe was mistaken in saying that his locality was ‘‘north-east from Amoy.’’ Seltzer (1962: 370, 1915) noted that present-day Changting (25.24N, 116.17E, Times Atlas) had been known as Tingchow until 1913. This locality is aproximately 120 miles northwest of Amoy.

Of two additional Swinhoe specimens from the Tingchow mountains in AMNH, one is undated and the other is dated October 1867, taken after the date of Swinhoe’s letter with its description of anophrys .

AMNH 682834 had not previously been recognized as a type. Swinhoe (1871: 362) himself later synonymized anophrys with A. concinnus , and the name seems to have disappeared from synonymies until listed by Dickinson et al. (2006a: 69).