376 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Family PLOCEIDAE, Weaverbirds 



BUBALORNIS ALBIROSTRIS INTERMEDIUS (Cabanis) 



Tcxtor intermedms Cabanis, Journ. fiir Orn., 1868, p. 413 : Kisuani, Usambara 

 district, Tanganyika Territory. 



Specimens coixected: 



2 adult males, Ourso, Ethiopia, September 19-October 3, 1911 (Ouellard 



coll.). 



1 immature male, Dire Daoua, Ethiopia, October 5, 1910 (Ouellard). 



2 adult males, 1 adult female, Sadi Malka, Ethiopia, December 21, 1911. 



2 adult males, 4 immature males, 1 adult female, Gato River near Gardula, 



Ethiopia, April 6-11, 1912. 

 1 immature male, Anole, Ethiopia, June 17, 1912. 

 1 immature male, Yebo, Ethiopia, June 21, 1912. 



1 adult female. Northern Guaso Nyiro River, Kenya Colony, August 3, 1912. 



2 immature males, 1 female, 1 unsexed, Lekiundu River, Kenya Colony, 

 August 4, 1912. 



Soft parts: Adult male — bill red; feet olive. Adult female — ^bill 

 olivaceous-black with base of mandible paler and tinged with red; 

 feet olive. Immature male — bill varies from blackish, with some pale 

 orange at the base of the mandible, to orange, with a little black 

 basally and at the tips of both the maxilla and the mandible; feet 

 bluish gray to olive, claws light brown. 



Hartert ^° has reviewed the races of the buffalo weaver and recog- 

 nizes scioaniis Salvadori.^^ If this race be valid, the Ethiopian 

 specimens listed above would have to be referred to it, but I can not 

 find any difference between them and Kilimanjaro birds {inter- 

 tnedius) and therefore synonymize scioarms with intermedins. 

 Sclater " has come to the same conclusion, although Neumann,^^ van 

 Someren,^^ and others recognize scioanus. According to Hartert, 

 scioanus has a whitish wash on the basis of the remiges, while Zed- 

 litz ^* writes that the inner portions of these feathers are darkish, 

 brownish gray in scioanv^ and pure white in intei'iiiedius^ that the 

 former occurs from eastern Shoa, Hawash, etc., to northern Somali- 

 land, and that birds of southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya Colony, 

 and southern Somaliland are interiiwdius. If this were so, then the 

 Ourso, Dire Daoua, and Sadi Malka birds should be scioanus and 

 the Gato River, Anole, Yebo, etc., specimens intermedius, but there is 

 absolutely no difference between them inter se, or between them and 

 practically topotypical intermiedius. 



The birds collected in June and August are in rather fresh plum- 

 age as are also a male from Sadi Malka, December 21, and the young 



» Nov. Zool., vol. 14, pp. 485-486, 1907. 



30 Ann. Mus. Civ. Genova, 1884, p. 195 : Daimbl, Shoa. 



'°- Systema avium ^thiopicarum. pt. 2, 715, 1930. 



s» Journ. fur Orn., 1916, p. 9. 



"Nov. Zool., vol. 29, p. 133, 1922. 



"Journ. fQr Orn., 1916, p. 9. 



