Chlorophonia flavirostris boehmi Conway

LeCroy, Mary, 2012, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 10. Passeriformes: Emberizidae: Emberizinae, Catamblyrhynchinae, Cardinalinae, Thraupinae, And Tersininae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2012 (368), pp. 1-125 : 90-91

Chlorophonia flavirostris boehmi Conway

Chlorophonia flavirostris boehmi Conway, 1962: 61 (‘‘Ecuador’’).

Now Chlorophonia flavirostris P.L. Sclater, 1861 . See Storer, 1970: 355, Ingels, 1979: 77–80, and Dickinson, 2003: 822.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 781690, adult male, wing 58 mm, tail, 26 mm, AMNH 648896, immature male, wing 58, tail, 26.5 [ Ecuador], from the Edward Boehm aviaries of Trenton, New Jersey, via the Bronx Zoo.

COMMENTS: Conway described this subspecies based on an immature male in the Bronx Zoo and an adult male that he saw and described at the Boehm aviaries. The syntypes had not previously been identified. AMNH has five specimens of C. flavirostris that originated in the Boehm avaries and no other specimens of the species for comparison. The above two specimens are considered syntypes for the following reasons: they were carefully sexed and prepared by Lee Crandall for AMNH 648896 and David Schwendeman for AMNH 781690, the bodies of both were preserved, and, as would be appropriate, they were deposited at AMNH. Conway (1962: 61) stated that the bird in immature plumage was sexed as a male when it died. The adult male is marked ‘‘Type-?, Conway’’ in hand unknown.

A third specimen, AMNH 763838 , unsexed (but lacks any yellowish chin), wing 59, tail 27, is also in AMNH. There is no indication that this specimen came to AMNH via the Bronx Zoo ; according to the catalog, it came directly from Boehm aviaries. It was prepared by Charles Rogers, who at that time was at Princeton University and was thanked by Everitt (1973: 13) in his introduction for identifications Rogers had made. I do not consider that it has type status.

The other two specimens came to AMNH from the Cleveland Zoo but had originally come to them from Boehm: AMNH 701828, wing 62, tail 26, is unsexed but has a bit of the chestnut band apparent and is probably a male molting into adult plumage, and AMNH 768814, wing 58, tail 25, male by dissection. Ingels (1979) did not see any of these AMNH specimens and apparently was not told that both of these from Cleveland have a wash of blue over their green plumage, and AMNH 768814 has a decidedly blue patch on the upper breast, above the chestnut band. Conway emphasized that the birds he was describing had no blue, and I do not consider that these two specimens figure in the description. I wonder if other specimens of the species show this blue wash or if this is an artifact of captivity, but I have no comparative material.

Charles Everitt (1973: 226), who was curator at Boehm’s aviaries, wrote about C. flavirostris , saying that Boehm had personally collected his specimens in Ecuador; as Ingels (1979: 79) noted, he transposed the sexes in his description. He gave no information with regard to boehmi.