Corvus bennetti bonhoti Mathews

Lecroy, Mary, 2014, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 12. Passeriformes: Ploceidae, Sturnidae, Buphagidae, Oriolidae, Dicruridae, Callaeidae, Grallinidae, Corcoracidae, Artamidae, Cracticidae, Ptilonorhynchidae, Cnemophilidae, Paradisaeidae, And Corvidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2014 (393), pp. 1-165 : 129-130

Corvus bennetti bonhoti Mathews

Corvus bennetti bonhoti Mathews, 1912a: 442 (Murchison, West Australia).

Now Corvus bennetti North, 1901 . See Mathews, 1926: 403–406; Hartert, 1929a: 48–54; Mathews, 1930: 895; Blake and Vaurie, 1962: 276; Rowley, 1970; Schodde and Mason, 1999: 608; and dos Anjos, 2009: 633.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 674582 , female, collected at Yanthangarra Pool (= Yandamgarra), 28.18S, 117.09E ( USBGN, 1957), Murchison, Western Australia, Australia, on 17 November 1899, by J.T. Tunney. From the Mathews Collection (no. 5176) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype from Murchison, ‘‘West Australia,’’ and gave the wing measurement as 295 mm. In addition to Tunney’s original label and Mathews and Rothschild type labels, the holotype also bears a Mathews ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it was the specimen used as the model for Mathews (1926, pl. 595, opp. p. 403; text p. 403). Mathews does not say there that the illustrated bird is the type, but the wing measurement given is 295 and he added measurements for bill 47 and tarsus 55. There he also added ‘‘Yandamgarra’’ as the Murchison locality. This is the way Tunney spelled the locality on his label.

Tunney’s label also bears the WAM number 1644, and Ron Johnstone (personal commun.) kindly provided the following information: Specimen no. 1644 in the WAM catalog of 1896–1900 is noted to have been sent to Mathews in 1910. It was one of two specimens collected by Tunney on the Mount Magnet Road in November 1899. The other, a male, now WAM no. A28470 , has been identified by Johnstone as Corvus orru cecilae . The two specimens were entered together in the old WAM catalog as having been collected at Nannotharra. There is a Nannowtharra Hill at 28.17S, 117.00E on the Mount Magnet Road, not far from Yanthangarra Pool.

Mathews’ measurements on Tunney’s label are wing 295, culmen 48, tarsus 54. I measure wing 292, bill 49, tarsus 56. The wings and tail of this specimen are very worn and it appears that Mathews tried to estimate the unworn length of the wing, because my measurements usually agree quite closely with his. These measurements fall below the measurements given by Rowley (1970: 59) for females of C. orru cecilae from western and central Australia and within the measurements given for females of C. bennetti .