BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 95 



margins. Sclater does not mention rufuensis at all, but Sjostedt^* 

 recognizes it. I have seen no specimens from the range of Neumann's 

 form, but I find that a series of 17 birds from Ukamba and adjacent 

 areas contains individuals showing one or more of, or even all, the 

 characters of rufuensis. Therefore, for the present at least, I con- 

 sider the latter as indistinguishable from hypoleuca. 



One of the present specimens is in molt, the other in fresh plumage. 

 The dimensions of the latter one are : Wing, 109 ; tail, 107 ; culmen, 

 19; tarsus, 36 mm. 



Van Someren ^^ writes that this is a common species, "frequenting 

 the outskirts of forests, the scrub, and plantations. They are noisy 

 birds, and their cry is harsh and oft-repeated. They were found 

 breeding in February and March, a nest with eggs was collected in 

 February, and one with young towards the end of March." 



Lonnberg ^^ found a family of this species at Nairobi on January 

 6 and collected the old female and a young female. This extends 

 the limits of the breeding season back to about early December. 



TURDOIDES HINDEI (Sharpe) 



Crateropus hindei Shaepe, Bull. Brit. Orn. Club, vol. 11, p. 29, 1900: Athi River. 

 Specimens collected: 



1 male, Tana River at mouth of Thika River, Kenya Colony, August 23, 1912. 



1 male, 9 miles up Thika River, Kenya Colony, August 27, 1912. 



Sclater ^'^ writes that Mndei is possibly nothing but the juvenal 

 plumage of T. hypoleuca. This is wrong, as a nestling hypoleuca 

 not yet fully fledged shows very clearly that the juvenal plumage 

 resembles that of the adult, and is very different from that of hindei. 

 Furthermore, the plumage of hindei generally known is the adult and 

 not the juvenal stage. The juvenal plumage of hindei appears never 

 to have been described. While with the Smithsonian-Roosevelt ex- 

 pedition, Mearns obtained a young hindei just beginning to molt 

 into adult plumage. It shows the preceding plumage very well, a 

 brief description of which follows : 



Forehead, crown, occiput, lores, cheeks, auriculars, nape, chin, and 

 sides of throat uniform dark fuscous-black; upper back fuscous 

 barred with tawny-rufous; lower back, rump, and upper tail coverts 

 bright tawny-rufous; rectrices fuscous-brown indistinctly barred 

 with rufous-brown ; upper wing coverts and remiges fuscous-brown, 

 the inner coverts and the secondaries margined w^ith rufous ; middle 

 of throat and the breast dull fuscous-black, grayer than the top of 



^ Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der schweclischen zoologischen Expedition nach dem 

 Kllimandjaro . . . Dentsch- Ostafrika, 1905-6, etc., VOgel, p. 156, 1908. 

 «Ibis, 1916, p. 464. 



*8Kongl. Svensica Vet.-Akad. Handl., 1911, p. 125. 

 i" Systema avium ^thioplcarum, pt. 2, p. 355, 1930. 



