BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 319 



cords it from the northwestern coastal area of South Africa and 

 viyochrous from the northeastern part of that country. Something 

 must be wrong here, but it is obvious that he finds that two forms 

 occur in Africa south of the Zambesi. I can not help feeling that 

 instead of parvus Roberts meant to write hi'achyptems^ which is 

 known from Angola and may therefore be expected in the adjacent 

 region to the south. Yet Sclater" includes northern Damaraland in 

 the range of myochrous. 



Lonnberg -- records viyochrous from Luazomela, Kenya Colony, 

 but writes that he is uncertain as to whether the birds seen in the 

 Guaso Nyiro country belong to this form or to parvus. I have seen 

 birds from the latter region and they are inyochrous. The geo- 

 graphical limits of parvus and myochrous in Ethiopia are some- 

 what indefinitely known. Reichenow ^^ says that two birds from 

 Filoa, Hawash district, and one from Dolo, Ganale region, are 

 parvus^ while others from Dolo, from Ganale, and one from Bardera, 

 southern Somaliland, are laemostigma. I consider the latter form 

 merely an aggregate of intermediates between parvus and 

 myochrous., at least until more material becomes available for study. 

 Zedlitz -* claims that laemostigma is smaller than either parvus or 

 myochrous., and gives the wing length as over 130 millimeters in the 

 last, up to 130 millimeters in the second, and from 120-130 milli- 

 meters in the first named. I have measured a series of 11 adults 

 representing all three, and find no constant size difference. Thus, 

 an undoubted example (male) of parvus from the Blue Nile has a 

 wing length of 123 millimeters, while Tanganyikan specimens of 

 myochrous vary from 118-130 millimeters in this regard. The series 

 collected by the Frick expedition have wing lengths of from 120.5- 

 124 millimeters. Claude Grant ^^ likewise found that no reliance 

 could be placed on the wing measurement as a taxonomic character. 



The character of the throat patch seems to be one of age. Year- 

 old birds have plain grayish throats, while older individuals have 

 whitish gular feathers with dusky shaft streaks. 



The Juvenal bird from Tharaka has the rusty edges of the feathers 

 of the upper parts much paler, more sandy buff, less rufous, than 

 another comparable bird from Dar es Salaam. 



Throughout its range, this bird is fairly rigidly restricted to the 

 vicinity of palms in which it nests. Heuglin noted that in the upper 

 parts of the Nile Valley the birds built their nests in the axils or 

 glued to the downward drooping leaves of the dom palms {Hyphene 



" Syst. Avium Ethiop., 1924, p. 261. 

 »Ibis, 1915, p. 310. 



2=KunRl. 8v. Vet. Akad. Ilaiiingr., vol. 47. 1911, p. 78. 



"In the last part of Eilaiiger's " Beitriigc zur Vogolfauna Nordostafrika.s," Journ. f. 

 Ornith., 1905, pp. 672-673. 



^<.T(jurn. f. Ornith., 1910. pP- 782-784. 



