BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 57 



Family CAMPEPHAGIDAE, Cuckoo-Shrikes 



CAMPEPHAGA FLAVA FLAVA Vieillot 



Oampepliaga flava Vieillot, Nouv. Diet. d'Hist. Nat., vol. 10, p. 49, 1817 

 (female) : Southern Africa. 



Specimens collected: 1 male, Thika River, 20 miles above the mouth, Kenya 

 Colony, August 27, 1912. 



The black cuckoo-shrike has two races, according to Neumann/^ as 

 follows : 



1. C. flava flava: From the Cape of Good Hope to northern An- 

 gola and to the Katanga, north through Mozambique and Nyasaland 

 to Lake Kivu, across Tanganyika Territory and Kenya Colony to 

 Tertale and Lake Stefanie in southern Ethiopia and the Juba River 

 in southern Somaliland, intergrading in Uganda and the Nandi and 

 Kakamega districts of western Kenya Colony with the western race 

 petiti. 



The range as given above is based on the account given by Neu- 

 mann. However, Neumann agrees with other investigators that 

 Lanicterus hartlaubii Salvadori ^* is merely a color variation of typi- 

 cal flava (or nigra as he calls it). But hartlaubii was based on a 

 bird said to have come from Anseba, Bogosland. If the type did 

 come from Bogosland, the range would have to be extended north 

 across all Ethiopia to the Eritrean border. As far as I have been 

 able to discover, the species has otherwise never been taken north of 

 Tertale, and I therefore am inclined to question the locality of the 

 type of hartlauhii. 



2. C. flava petiti: From northern Angola and southern Gaboon to 

 the Congo Basin and east to Uganda, Urundi, and Ruanda, intergrad- 

 ing in the last three with the typical race. In this race the female has 

 the underparts yellow instead of white as in flava^ more or less barred 

 with dark fuscous. The adult males are very similar but typical flava 

 has the inner webs of the remiges washed with yellow, while in petiti^ 

 these margins are only slightly or, not at all, yellowish. Van Some- 

 ren ^^ considers petiti specifically distinct because of the marked differ- 

 ence in the females of the two and also because he has found the two 

 forms in the same x^lace. His latter argument, however, loses much 

 of its strength because of the fact that the only place where he ob- 

 tained both forms was in the country where the two intergrade (the 

 Uganda-Kenya border) and where individuals of both types might 

 well be expected to occur. Furthermore, when we remember that the 

 members of this genus are so prone to produce color varieties (such as 

 hartlauhii in flava and xanthornoides and i^othschildi in phoenicea)^ 



"Journ. fur Orn., 1916, pp. 153-154. 



" Ann. Mus. Genova, voL 4, p. 439, 1873. 



" Nov. Zool., vol. 29, pp. 106-107, 1922. 



