64 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Aside from faselahis (with the secondaries with a broad silvery- 

 gray band) which is a synonym of ecaudatus, one other name has 

 to be taken into consideration^H eJotarsus Jeuconotv^ Riippell/* 

 characterized by having the back light creamy fulvous instead of 

 maroon. However, this plumage, which Reichenow ^^ considered to 

 be that of very old ecaudafus, is nothing but a color phase that oc- 

 curs not infrequently throughout the entire range of the species. 

 This was demonstrated by Zedlitz,^" who writes that a bird lived in 

 the Zoological Park in Breslau for 11 years in leuconotus plumage, 

 and that others in Breslau and in Berlin lived for many years in the 

 dark ecaudatus type of feathering. Also a bird not more than two 

 years old with a light, almost whitish back {leuconotus) was taken 

 at Khartoum. No specimen molting from maroon to creamy color 

 or vice versa is known in any collection. Zedlitz made a mistake 

 when he said that leuconotus-^\mxi?igQd birds occur from Sudan to 

 Togo and east Africa together with reddish ecaudatus^ but not south 

 of there. Sharpe ^^ lists two leuconotus from South Africa. C. Grant 

 recorded leuconotus from Beira, Mozambique. 



The name fasc'mtus is based on an adult female. The evidence 

 advanced by Erlanger,^^ Zedlitz,^^ and others, is sufficient to estab- 

 lish as proved the fact that the adult female of the bateleur has the 

 secondaries silvery gray tipped with black, while the male has these 

 feathers blackish. In the American Museum of Natural History 

 there is a bird with silvery gray, black-tipped secondaries, labeled 

 a male. This bird, however, is one of a collection made by Capt. 

 Keith Caldwell's native skinners, and the sexing is therefore quite 

 unreliable. Native African bird skinners have great difficulty with 

 birds of prey in nonbreeding condition, perhaps because of the two 

 ovaries so often present. 



Erlanger ^° collected a number of adult females in Ethiopia (Shoa 

 and Gallaland) and Somaliland, and found them to have silvery gray 

 secondaries tipped with black. He compared them with four adults 

 (sex not stated, but apparently males, although he thought them to be 

 females) from east Africa and found that these birds lacked the 

 gray color. He thereupon concluded that the broad gray band on 

 the secondaries is a sign of old age, but that the birds of equatorial 

 Africa never get this plumage which is found both in northeastern 

 and in South Africa. He goes on to suggest that there are two 

 species involved. This, of course, is not so, as birds of the gray- 



" Syst. Uebers., p. 10, 1845. 



'5 Vcig. Afr., vol. 1, p. 598. 



i«Journ. f. Ornith., 1910, pp. 386-388. 



" Cat. Birds Brit. Mus., vol. 1, 1874, p. 301. 



»8Journ. f. Ornith., 1904, pp. 198-201. 



"Idem, 1910, pp. 386-388 



^Journ. f. Ornitli., 1904, pp. 198-201. 



