BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 



^9 



The specimen listed above is darker than other males from 

 Mwanza and from Ukerewe Island, southern Victoria Nyanza. It 

 has the crown and occiput darker than any individual of either sex 

 in the series examined. The description of the male given by 

 Swann ^^ is not correct in that he says the throat and sides of the face 

 are whitish. I have seen no specimen with whitish sides of the face 

 and only one in which the upper throat and chin are whitish — the 

 Mwanza bird (Museum Comparative Zoology 133155). The sides of 

 the face in all specimens seen are slaty gray with dark shaft streaks 

 in the feathers. 



The following measurements indicate the size variations of this 

 species : 



The range of this species is given by Swann ^^ as from Uganda to 

 Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia in eastern Africa. Sclater -^ gives a 

 similar statement of distribution. The range should be extended 

 southward to Tanganyika Territory at least as far as the southern 

 tip of Lake Victoria (Kome, Mwanza — 2 specimens). 



This species, together with dickinsoni Sclater, and sonivenfns 

 Peters, are often placed in a genus unto themselves — Dissodectes 

 Sclater, characterized by a double-toothed mandible, and wing with 

 the third primary longest. None of the specimens of the three species 

 examined has more than a single tooth on the maxillary tomium, and 

 while the third primary is actually the longest, the difference be- 

 tween it and the second is very small, certainly as small as the dif- 

 ference in the opposite direction in the Cerchneine falcons. Disso- 

 dectes may stand as a subgenus but certainly not as a genus. It is 

 really nothing but a small aggregate of gray-plumaged species of 

 the subgenus Cerchneis. 



POLIHIERAX SEMITORQUATUS CASTANONOTUS (Heuglin) 



Hypotriorchis custanonotiis Hf.ugi.ix, Ibis, 1860, p. 407 

 near Gondokoro, Upper White Nile. 



/Specimens collected: 



Male, Ourso, Ethiopia, September 13, 1911. 



=1 Synopsis of the Accipitres, 1922, p. 230. 



22 Idem, p. 230. 



=3 Syst. Avium Ethiop., 1924, p. 55. 



94312—30 8 



Mere Belenia — ?'. e.. 



