Fringilla anna Dole

LeCroy, Mary, 2013, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 11. Passeriformes: Parulidae, Drepanididae, Vireonidae, Icteridae, Fringillinae, Carduelinae, Estrildidae, And Viduinae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2013 (381), pp. 1-155 : 26-27

[ Fringilla anna Dole ]

Fringilla anna Dole, 1878: 49 (Hawaii) .

Now Ciridops anna ( Dole, 1878) . See Rothschild, 1900: 183–184; Amadon, 1950: 174–175; Greenway, 1968: 96; Pratt, 2002; Dickinson, 2003: 759; Pratt, 2005: 273–275; and Olson, 2012.

COMMENTS: AMNH 459008, sex? [subadult], ‘‘ Hawaii,’’ date? From the Rothschild Collection. This is the specimen about which Scott Wilson ( Wilson and Evans, 1890 –1899: 23) said: ‘‘I procured a stuffed specimen from the Hon. C.R. Bishop, which had been obtained from the late Mr. Mills of Hilo. Mr. Bishop has a much finer example remaining with more grey about the head and neck, taken by the same gentleman.’’ Rothschild (1900: 183) purchased it from Wilson and it came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection. It is this specimen that is illustrated in Wilson and Evans (1890 –1899: 23–24, unnumbered pl.) and about which Wilson said that the outer webs of the last three secondaries and the secondary and lesser coverts were ochraceus buff. (Rothschild called this pl. xix; it is no. 11 in the list of plates, but they are unnumbered in the text. The significance of Rothschild’s number has not been discovered.)

Olson (1994: 342) discussed the type of Fringilla anna in detail. As he stated, Dole (1878: 49), in his original description, did not say how many specimens he had, but his description applied to an adult with white secondaries, not to a probable subadult with brown secondaries as in the AMNH specimen. Dole also did not say that the specimen he described was in the Mills Collection. According to Olson (1994: 342) this was an oversight, as Dole in 1876 had given the same description in an earlier list of the Mills collection without supplying a name; I have not seen this list. I agree with Olson that the description of anna applies only to the specimen in BBM and that that specimen should be considered the holotype (ICZN, 1999: 79, Art. 73.1.2).

In the years between 1878, when anna was described, and 1888, when Bishop is known to have exchanged rare Hawaiian birds with Scott Wilson, including the specimen of anna, Bishop was acquiring specimens that had been owned by Mills ( Manning, 1979: 41). Wilson’s statement concerning the acquisition of his specimen gives credance to its having come from Mills’ collection; however, there is no information on when it came into Mills’ hand. I have found no indication that Dole saw a second specimen of anna , and it seems strange that he would have failed to mention the plumage differences between the two had he seen both. It seems impossible at this late date definitely to link the AMNH specimen to Dole and his description of anna .

AMNH 459008 was not listed as a type by Rothschild (1900: 183–184) or by Hartert in his lists of types in the Rothschild Collection. Based on Amadon’s (1944: 12; 1950: 175) statement that the AMNH specimen was one of two specimens from the Mills collection that ‘‘became cotypes of Fringilla anna , as described by Judge Dole,’’ an AMNH type label was added. However, based on the above uncertainities, I agree with Olson that ‘‘the AMNH specimen probably has no status as a type’’ ( Olson, 1994: 342). It remains with the types, but with an added label to call attention to its questionable status.

Rothschild had a second specimen of C. anna , collected for him by Palmer and preserved in the flesh. This specimen is now in BMNH as part of the Rothschild Bequest. It has no type status.

A second AMNH specimen of C. anna, AMNH 230275, female, was exchanged on 7 July 1927 to AMNH from MCZ ( Bangs, 1930: 363), MCZ no. 10987, and bears a note signed ‘‘O.B[angs]’’ saying that there is no information concerning its provenance. It has no type standing. Olson (1992: 495– 500) provided evidence that this specimen and another at MCZ were almost certainly collected by William T. Brigham in 1864– 1865 and that they may have come from Molokai Island instead of Hawaii Island, where other specimens of C. anna were collected.

The species is extinct; there are only five specimens known ( Olson, 1992). Based in large part on earlier work by Olson, the above was written prior to the appearance of a summary article by Olson (2012) of all the information known about Ciridops anna . This recent article supports the conclusions listed above and greatly extends our knowledge of this rarest of the drepanidines.