Pachycephala sanfordi Mayr

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 : 32

Pachycephala sanfordi Mayr

Pachycephala sanfordi Mayr, 1931b: 23 (Malaita Island, British Solomon Islands).

Now Pachycephala orioloides sanfordi Mayr, 1931 . See Galbraith, 1956: 197, Mayr and Diamond, 2001: 395, Dickinson, 2003: 477, and Boles, 2007: 421.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 227316 , adult male, collected on Malaita Island , 3000 feet, Solomon Islands, on 21 March 1930, by William F. Coultas, Walter J. Eyerdam, and Hannibal Hamlin on the Whitney South Sea Expedition (no. 39633).

COMMENTS: Mayr cited the AMNH number of the holotype in the original description, but did not give the number of specimens in his type series. Paratypes are: AMNH 227301–227346 ; of these AMNH 227305 and 227332 were exchanged to ZMB in July 1936, and AMNH 227310 was exchanged to J. Berlioz in October 1932 and should now be in MHNP. I did not find AMNH 227304 , and 227320 in the collection, and they were perhaps exchanged to other institutions without the catalog having been marked .

Mayr (1931b) published on the birds collected on Malaita by the Whitney Expedition and listed the various collecting localities and dates (p. 2 and map). When the holotype of sanfordi was collected, the expedition personnel were camped on Mt. Torombusu (variously spelled in the journals and 5 Mt. Kolovrat on charts of the period), now called Mt. Ire, 09.10S, 161.05E (USBGN, 1974a).

There is little known about the altitudinal distribution of Pachycephala on islands ( Galbraith, 1956: 189–190). Hamlin (vol. T, unpublished journals of the Whitney South Sea Expedition, archives, Department of Ornithology, AMNH) noted that when he was collecting ashore on Malaita in early February, he ‘‘did not hear any thickheads calling.’’ On 15 February ‘‘thickheads’’ were collected between 1400 and 3400 ft. Other specimen records extend the altitudinal range of sanfordi to 4000 ft on Mt. Torombusu.

Galbraith (1956: 197), Mayr and Diamond (2001: 395) and Boles (2007: 421) have considered sanfordi a subspecies of P. pectoralis . Dickinson (2003: 477) included it in P. orioloides .