528 BULLETIN 186, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



on Doi Suthep to 3,300 feet, from November 19 (1931) to February 

 14 (1936). 



The movements of this small starling, which, making its appear- 

 ance in great numbers overnight, vanishes as suddenly at the end of 

 its stay, are largely governed by the antheses of the mai kioao {Butea 

 frondosa) and the silk-cotton (Bombax malabaricwm) , which, in the 

 cold weather, are leafless but ablaze with scarlet ornithophilous 

 flowers. Among the various birds that visit these two trees, the 

 present species draws attention by its numbers, its eager crowding 

 over the blossom-laden branches, and its continual, not unpleasing, 

 churring and chatter. It is probable that insects, rather than nectar, 

 are the lure, especially since the attraction of the mai kioao for the 

 myna continues beyond the period of bloom; those few individuals 

 which stay throughout the year are, in my experience, never seen 

 away from the groves of that tree. 



A male collected at Chiang Mai, May 18, had the gonads greatly 

 enlarged and was evidently one of a pair breeding in a hole in a 

 mai kioao, about ten feet above the ground. A male from the same 

 locality, September 1, is in post ju venal molt. 



Adults have the irides white, blue-gray, or pale blue ; the bill slaty 

 blue at the base, green at the center, and bright yellow at the tip; 

 the interior of the mouth blue; the feet and toes pinkish yellow or 

 fleshy brown; the claws yellowish horn. Juveniles differ in having 

 the bill wholly yellow. 



This is an extraordinarily variable form, subject both to erythrism 

 and to albinism; curiously enough, the two conditions often appear 

 in the same individual ! A more or less normal adult in fresh plum- 

 age (October) has the elongated, lanceolate feathers of the crown 

 and nape soft gray, with silvery-gray shaft streaks; the remaining 

 upperparts soft gray, faintly washed with rufous (more strongly 

 on the upper tail coverts) ; the primaries black, the inner ones nar- 

 rowly tipped with silvery gray; the secondaries black with an in- 

 wardly increasingly broad margin of silvery gray until the innermost 

 are wholly of this color; the two central pairs of rectrices silvery 

 gray, the remaining pairs dull black, with an outwardly increasingly 

 broad chestnut-rufous tip: the underparts pale gray, almost white 

 on the chin and throat (the feathers of the breast with white shaft 

 streaks), washed with dull rufous along the flanks and on the under 

 tail coverts; the bend of the wing, the under wing coverts, and the 

 axillaries pure white. There is considerable individual variation 

 in the amount and degree of rufous (or even chestnut) suffusion 

 above and below ; albinism appears usually symmetrically in the wing. 

 With wear the feathers of the crown and nape tend to lose the darker 

 margins and these parts may become partly or wholly silvery gray 



