THE BIRDS OF NORTHERN THAILAND 205 



having the irides brownish gray; the feet and toes dull brownish 

 yellow. 



The male has the forepart of the crown and the sides of head and 

 neck rufous-chestnut, this color sometimes continued as a narrow 

 band across the nape ; the rest of the crown and nape bright shining 

 violet-blue, with black and white bases of the feathers showing 

 through here and there ; the remaining upperparts barred black, white, 

 and turquoise blue ; the underparts white, more or less deeply suffused 

 with pale rufous on the breast, upper abdomen, and flanks. The 

 female differs in having the entire upperparts barred black and 

 rufous ; the entire underparts white, with narrow V-shaped black bars 

 on the feathers of breast and flanks. 



While amabilis cannot be distinguished from pulchella by color 

 characters, the two forms can unquestionably be separated by the dif- 

 ference in their respective tail lengths, as has been pointed out by de 

 Schauensee (1934). In the material before me, the tails of 9 speci- 

 mens from localities south of the Isthmus of Kra measure 63-72 mm. ; 

 of 11 from more northern districts, 73-83 mm. (The type specimens 

 of amabilis have the tail lengths 83.82 and 76.20 mm.) 



Peguan birds are said to have the feet and toes "greenish-brown" 

 (Oates) or "dull pale green" (Hume and Davison) ; specimens from 

 Thailand and Malaya have these parts dull yellow or ochraceous. If 

 the two populations consistently differ in this particular, a new name 

 must be found for the birds of Thailand north of the Isthmus. 



Family MEROPIDAE 



MEROPS SUPERCILIOSUS PHILIPPINUS Linnaeus 



Malaysian Brown-breasted Bee-eater 



[Merops] philippinus Linnaeus, Systema naturae, ed. 12, vol. 1, 1766, errata 



[omitted from p. 183] ("in Philippinis"). 

 Merops superciliosus philippinus, Gyldenstolpe, Kungl. Svenska Vet.-Akad. 



Handl., 1916, p. 110 (Chiang Rai). 

 Merops superciliosus javanicus, Deignan, Journ. Siam Soc. Nat. Hist. Suppl., 1931, 



p. 161 (Chiang Mai) ; 1936, p. 93 (Chiang Mai). 



In Stockholm are two specimens collected by Gyldenstolpe at Chiang 

 Rai, August 1 and 2, 1914, and another taken by Eisenhofer at Khun 

 Tan sometime during the same year. At Chiang Mai this bird was 

 locally common between March 5 (1931) and September 5 (1930) and 

 wholly absent at other seasons; it probably occurs nowhere in our 

 provinces during the cold weather. 



Upon its first arrival at Chiang Mai, the brown-breasted bee-eater 

 may be seen in small, loose bands at the few places in the ricefields 

 that retain water, resting between flights upon the bunds or neighbor- 

 ing clumps of bamboo. Somewhat later it is found along the river 



