386 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



One of the females from Dire Daoua is molting the rectrices but 

 not the remiges ; one of the males from the same locality is in com- 

 plete fresh plumage, except for a few of the anterior crest feathers 

 which are just sprouted and beginning to bui'st from their sheaths. 



Mearns noted 50 of these birds during his stay on the Gato River, 

 March 29 to May 17, and 10 at the Abaya Lakes, March 18-26. 



UPUPA AFRICANA Bcchstein 



Upiipa africana Bechstein, Kurze Uebers., vol. 4, p. 172, 1811 : Congo to 

 the Cape. 



Specimens collected: 



Four males, Lekiundu Riverj Kenya Colony, August 4-8, 1912. 



The African hoopoe occurs from South Africa north to the Congo 

 forest area, and, in eastern Africa, through Tanganyika Territory, 

 Uganda, and Kenya Colony to southern Ethiopia, where Zaphiro 

 procured it at Wandu. It is not definitely known from Somaliland 

 or Jubaland, but it may possibly occur there. It is not divisible 

 into geographic races, U. a. maior Reichenow being merely an un- 

 usually large example of africana. Van Someren ^* regards africana 

 as a race of epops but the absence of the white bar on the primaries 

 of the former is so striking a difference between it and the latter, in 

 which a broad white band is present, that it seems more natural to 

 consider them specifically distinct. It is true, however, that the 

 breeding ranges of the two are geographically distinct. Lonnberg ®° 

 has pointed out that although there is never any white on the pri- 

 maries in africana., the extent of white on the secondaries is very 

 variable, some specimens having more than the basal half of these 

 feathers white and only one white bar across the black distal part, 

 while others have these remiges black with three white bars, the two 

 proximal ones very broad, the most distal one narrow. Judging 

 from a series of 17 specimens examined I should say the former con- 

 dition is the usual one in this species. Claude Grant ^^ has disposed 

 of the synonyms of this bird and has considered the case of Upupa 

 waibeli in this connection. The latter is, however, a form of epops 

 if it is valid at all, but certainly not of africana. 



This hoopoe is quite variable in color, males being darker than 

 females as a rule. It seems that a larger amount of material might 

 show southern birds (north to central Tanganyika Territory) to 

 be somewhat paler in general than northern ones (from Kenya 

 Colony), but with the series at hand I can not attempt any sub- 

 specific differentiation. 



" Nov. Zool., vol. 29, 1922, p. 81. 



«*Kiingl. Sv. Vet. Akad. Ilandlgr., vol. 48, 1911, p. 76. 



««lbis, 1915, pp. 279-281. 



