392 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



b. Shaft stripes of upperparts usually white, only very slightly tinged with buff 

 (central Texas to Arizona, south to northern Coahuila, Chihuahua, and 



Sonora) Cyrtonyx montezumae mearnsi ( p. 392) 



bb. Shaft stripes of upperparts definitely buflfy. 



c. Breast and abdomen slightly paler, pinkish cinnamon (eastern Oaxaca south 

 in highlands to northwestern Nicaragua) . . . .Cyrtonyx ocellatus (p. 400) 

 cc. Breast and abdomen slightly duskier — vinaceous-fawn to fawn color. 



d. Upperparts with more blackish, the general color of the brown areas 

 slightly darker on the average — Saccardo's umber (Michoacan to central 



Oaxaca) Cyrtonyx montezumae sallei (p. 399) 



dd. Upperparts with less blackish, the general color of the brown areas 

 slightly paler on the average — tawny-olive (central Tamaulipas to 

 Durango and Sinaloa south to Puebla, Michoacan, and the Valley of 

 Mexico) Cyrtonyx montezumae montezumae (p. 396) 



CYRTONYX MONTEZUMAE MEARNSI Nelson 



Mearns's Harlequin Quail 



Adult male. — Lores and middle of forehead and of crown black, broadly 

 bordered on each side with white; a black supraorbital line from the 

 lores to the posterolateral angle of the occiput; this band continuous 

 through the lores with a paler one (slate to blackish slate) one extending 

 posteroventrally demarcating the throat from the face and ending below 

 the cheeks where it expands ventrally to form a triangle with a medio- 

 ventral extension (which may or may not reach the black median area 

 of the throat) ; eyelids black, a large black rounded patch from below 

 the eye to the auriculars ; chin and middle of throat black ; all inter- 

 vening cephalic areas white; posterior part of crown and occiput black 

 much variegated with Sayal brown to Saccardo's umber, paling on the 

 nape to warm buff, with or without a dusky tinge; interscapulars and 

 feathers of upper back barred with heavy dark and narrow faint bands 

 of black and with the interspaces varying from onionskin pink to pale 

 Mikado brown, the feathers with prominent shaft streaks of ivory white, 

 occasionally tinged with buffy ; scapulars similar but edged with ashy and 

 with the shaft stripes more buffy; innermost secondaries varying from 

 buffy light grayish olive to deep smoke gray with six or seven transverse 

 black blotches on each web and with buffy shaft stripes ; other secondaries 

 similar on their outer webs but increasingly suffused with pale dull clove 

 brown on their inner ones, the innermost ones almost uniformly of this 

 color ; primaries dark clove brown to fuscous, their outer webs marginally 

 spotted with white; greater and inner median upper wing coverts mouse 

 gray to deep smoke gray transversely spotted with black ; lesser and outer 

 median coverts similar but with the spots white instead ; feathers of back 

 and lower back and ruinp like the interscapulars but without the pale shaft 

 stripes and with the brown areas more rufescent and narrower, the black 



