no. 3629 COLLOCALIA PAPUENSIS — SOMADIKARTA 3 



He also noted that the "thirteen specimens from north New Guinea 

 all have the tarsus fairly well feathered; the Mount Goliath bird has 

 it unfeathered, as does the Baroka bird." 



Mayr (1941, p. 85) listed C. w. papuensis with its range as given in 

 the original description. Mayr and Gilliard (1954, p. 342) reported 

 four later specimens of "C. whiteheadi papuensis" from the foothills 

 of Mount O'-mar and Mount Orata, Kubor Mountains, east-central 

 New Guinea. Three of these specimens that I was able to examine (2 

 skins and 1 spirit specimen) in the American Museum of Natural 

 History have the tarsus bare. Another spirit specimen could not be 

 located. 



Iredale (1956, pp. 219-220) treated C. papuensis as a full species 

 noting that one of its characters was a bare tarsus. He was apparently 

 unaware that C. w. papuensis had been described from a composite 

 series of specimens with feathered (including the type) and un- 

 feathered tarsi. He also believed the similarity of C. w. papuensis to 

 C. w. whiteheadi from Luzon to be only "coincidental, as so many 

 local species are known in this group." 



Salomonsen (1963, p. 510) named the bare-legged specimens from 

 Mount Goliath, from Baroka, and from the Kubor Mountains, as a 

 new subspecies, C. w. nuditarsus, differing from C. w. papuensis "in 

 having a bare tarsus, completely devoid of feathers; also in having 

 the upper-parts dull black, almost without any iridescence, the 

 feathers of nape with blackish grey basis, not — or almost not — 

 contrasting with the black tips; the colour of throat not differing 

 from that of breast and abdomen, but the entire underparts being 

 uniform sooty-brown, darker than in papuensis." He further (p. 511) 

 stated: "The difference between papuensis and nuditarsus in the 

 feathering of the tarsus is very striking. The differences in plumage 

 coloration are constant and easy to be seen in all specimens." 



I have examined Salomonsen's paratypic series (5 specimens in 

 AMNH) and Ogil vie- Grant's specimen (1912) from Parimau, Mimika 

 River. The Parimau and Mount Goliath specimens differ slightly 

 from Baroka and the Kubor Mountains specimens in having more 

 blackish brown feathers on the back. All appear closely related, but 

 may represent two different populations of an unrecognized full 

 species. This situation, however, requires further study. Rand and 

 Gilliard, in their recent "Handbook of New Guinea Buds" (1967, p. 

 277), still consider C. w. papuensis to be the only population of 

 C. whiteheadi that occurs in New Guinea. 



Medway (1966, pp. 162-164), in a review of field characters in the 

 genus Collocalia, mentioned neither C. w. papuensis nor C. w. nudi- 

 tarsus. He treated C. whiteheadi not as a distinct species but as a 

 race of C. brevirostris (type-locality: Assam; Horsfield, 1839; see also 



