Tropidorhynchus corniculatus watsoni Mathews

Mary, 2011, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 9. Passeriformes: Zosteropidae And Meliphagidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (348), pp. 1-193 : 129

Tropidorhynchus corniculatus watsoni Mathews

Tropidorhynchus corniculatus watsoni Mathews, 1925a: 110 , pl. 556 (Watson River, North Queensland).

Now Philemon corniculatus corniculatus (Latham, 1790) . See Salomonsen, 1967: 412, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 292–293, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185–191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 682–683.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 696893 , female, collected on the Watson River , 13.20S, 141.47E ( USBGN, 1957), Cape York , Queensland, Australia, on 22 June 1914. From the Mathews Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews (1925a: pl. 556, lower fig., opp. p. 109, text p. 110) named this subspecies in the paragraph describing the figured female of T. corniculatus . The holotype bears four labels: the original label, a Mathews ‘‘Figured’’ label, a Rothschild Collection label printed ‘‘Ex. coll. G.M. Mathews,’’ and an AMNH type label filled in by Charles Vaurie (probably when Salomonsen was working on the Meliphagidae at AMNH). Mathews had two specimens, a male and a female, both collected on 22 June 1914. The male, AMNH 696892 is the paratype.

Although the collector did not sign his labels, it was surely William McLennan, who at this time was collecting on the Watson River for William MacGillivray (1917 –1918: 77–78) and whose handwriting matches that on the labels of these two specimens, the legs of which are tied together above the tibiotarsal joint in McLennan’s characteristic manner.