Proceedings of 

 the United States 

 National Museum 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION • WASHINGTON, D.C. 



Volume 124 1967 Number 3629 



A Recharacterization 



of Collocalia papuensis Rand, 



the Three-toed Swiftlet 



By Soekarja Somadikarta 



National Research Council 



Visiting Research Associate, 



Department of Vertebrate Zoology 



During a study of the swiftlet genus Collocalia, I noticed that the 

 range of the species C. whiteheads as currently understood is discon- 

 tinuous and that one population, C. w. papuensis, generally considered 

 as belonging to this species, differs from all other swiftlets in having 

 only three toes. 



Whitehead's swiftlet, characterized by a distinctly forked tail, 

 uniformly dark back and rump, and naked tarsus, was described first 

 from Lepanto, North Luzon, Philippine Islands, by Ogilvie-Grant in 

 1895 (p. 459), and since then there have been many reports of C. 

 whiteheadi from various islands in the Philippines (McGregor, 1909, 

 p. 353; Peters, 1940, vol. 4, p. 221 ; Delacour and Mayr, 1946, p. 126; 

 and many others). It has also been recorded from New Guinea, Bis- 

 marck Archipelago (New Ireland), and Solomon Islands (Guadalcanal) 

 but not from the intervening islands, the Celebes, Lesser Sundas, 

 Moluccas, and western Papuan islands, or from Australia. All locali- 

 ties mentioned in this paper are shown in figure 1 . 



1 Permanent address: Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense, National Biological In- 

 stitute, Bogor, Indonesia. 



