Zonaeginthus castanotis alexandrae Mathews

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 : 105

Zonaeginthus castanotis alexandrae Mathews

Zonaeginthus castanotis alexandrae Mathews, 1912a: 428 (Alexandra, Northern Territory).

Now Taeniopygia castanotis (Gould, 1837) . See Mayr et al., 1968: 358; Schodde and Mason, 1999: 761–762; Dickinson, 2003: 733; and Payne, 2010: 357.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 720136 , [adult male], collected at Alexandria (5 Alexandra), 19.02S, 136.42E ( USBGN, 1957), Northern Territory, Australia, in 1906, by Wilfred Stalker. From the Mathews Collection (no. 3487) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype and gave the range as ‘‘ Northern Territory.’’ Paratypes are: Alexandria, AMNH 720137 (Mathews no. 3485), female, April 1905, by Stalker, AMNH 720138 (3486), female, by Stalker (original label undated, Mathews’ label marked April 1905). Mathews had also marked his label on the holotype as having been collected in April 1905, but Stalker was also collecting at Alexandria in 1906, and his label is so annotated. The number ‘‘831’’ on the reverse of Stalker’s label refers to the number of this species in Mathews (1908). The label on AMNH 720137 differs from the other Stalker bird labels, and it also bears a small label printed ‘‘Mus. Brit.’’ and ‘‘Seebohm Coll.,’’ but is otherwise blank. Stalker was also collecting mammals and this may be a label intended for mammals (which went to BMNH) that Stalker had at hand when he collected the specimen. There is no reason to doubt that the specimen was part of the Stalker collection.

Stalker’s bird collection was originally made for Sir William Ingram and reported on by Collingwood Ingram (1907, 1909). This species was only mentioned once by Ingram (1907: 415), where he noted that Stalker had collected one male and two females.