Nothura darwinii Darwin’s Nothura, 1720

Smith, Paul, Cibois, Alice & Straube, Fernando, 2014, On the Paraguayan specimens of Nothura darwinii (Aves: Tinamidae) and Glaucis hirsutus (Aves: Trochilidae) in the collection of the Natural History Museum of Geneva (Switzerland), with a review of South Brazilian reports of the latter, Revue suisse de Zoologie 121 (1), pp. 3-9 : 3-6

Nothura darwinii Darwin’s Nothura

Figs 1-2

Two specimens from Paraguay labelled as Nothura darwinii are present in the Geneva collection: MHNG 1720.053 (female, 5 km east of Estancia Santa Sofia, Departamento Concepción, 30 September 1989, field number PY 7083, collected by Claude Vaucher and Alain de Chambrier) and MHNG 1720.054 (unsexed, 20 km south of Puente Zinho, Departamento Concepción, 6 November 1987, no field number and unknown collector) . Both these specimens can be positively identified as Spotted Nothura Nothura maculosa on account of the following characteristics: i) barring present on both webs of the underside of the outer primaries, as seen in Fig. 2 (confined to the outer web in darwinii ) ( Conover, 1950); ii) tarsal measurements of 357 mm and 350 mm ( darwinii being in the region 310-330 mm; Bump & Bump, 1969). Furthermore one of the specimens labelled as darwinii (MHNG 1720.053) was referred to as maculosa in field notes made by its collectors.

Nothura darwinii was included without comment in the Paraguayan avifauna by Contreras et al. (1990) presumably on the basis of these specimens, and later listed by Hayes (1995) as a species for which “no details have been published”. Amarilla & Barreto (1999) list an undocumented sight record by B. Young from near Cerro León, Departamento Alto Paraguay in 1998 but this seems almost certain to be in error, that area being largely forested, subhumid as opposed to the arid habitats this species occupies in the rest of its range and regularly birded without any prior or additional records.

Nothura darwinii occurs in Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, the latter two sharing land borders with Paraguay ( Cabot, 1992; Schulenberg et al., 2007). In Argentina N. darwinii is distributed on the eastern slope of the Andes from Provincias Jujuy and Salta south through eastern La Pampa and southwestern Buenos Aires to Rio Negro and northern Chubut ( Bump & Bump, 1969; Cabot, 1992; Davies, 2002). In Bolivia its distribution again is associated largely with uplands and foothills in La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca, Tarija and Oruro Departaments, where it occurs locally to 4300 m ( Hennessy et al., 2003). In fact the closest Paraguayan territory comes to the known distribution of N. darwinii is extreme southwestern Boquerón department, and adjacent areas of Argentina and Bolivia in this area are occupied only by N. maculosa . Its presence in Paraguay must therefore be considered unlikely.

Figures

FIG. 1 Nothura maculosa specimens, previously labeled as Nothura darwinii: MHNG 1720.054 (above), MHNG 1720.053 (below).

FIG. 2 Details of the primaries for MHNG 1720.054 (above) and MHNG 1720.053 (below). The barring present on both webs of the underside of the primaries is characteristic of Nothura maculosa.