Prinia sonitans Swinhoe, 1860

LeCroy, M., 2008, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History. Part 7. Passeriformes: Sylviidae, Muscicapidae, Platysteiridae, Maluridae, Acanthizidae, Monarchidae, Rhipiduridae, And Petroicidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 313 (1), pp. 1-287 : 48

Prinia sonitans Swinhoe

Prinia sonitans Swinhoe, 1860: 50 (Amoy) .

Now Prinia flaviventris sonitans Swinhoe, 1860 . See Cheng, 1987: 839, and del Hoyo et al., 2006: 434.

Syntype: AMNH 600316, adult male, collected on Hsia-men Tao (5 Amoy Island), 24.30N, 118.07E (USBGN, 1968b), Fujian, China, on 10 April 1858, by R. Swinhoe (no. 35).

COMMENTS: Swinhoe (1860) reported on the birds he had collected on Amoy in the previous 5 years. In the original description, he did not designate a type or say how many specimens he had collected. He noted that the described male was collected on 9 April (perhaps prepared as a specimen on 10 April), but no year was mentioned; the female was also described. Sharpe (1883: 205) listed (as Burnesia sonitans ) four Swinhoe specimens of this form in BMNH, two of which were from Amoy, but were undated. The taxon is not listed in Warren and Harrison (1971), and no 9 April specimen is present in BMNH (Michael Walters, personal commun.). Because AMNH 600316 was collected by Swinhoe within the 5 years prior to 1860, I think it to be a syntype of Prinia sonitans . It was not listed by Hartert in any of his lists of Rothschild Collection type specimens and had not previously been included with the types in AMNH.