328 BULLETIN 15 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



land is in April; in Kenya Colony in March. At Haro-Gobana in 

 Gurraland Erlanger ^^ found a nest with two eggs on April 8. 



Like the other members of its genus, this bird lives in the thorn- 

 bush country and is usually found singly or in pairs. 



Sclater ^* considers massaicus and ruwenzorii as subspecies of minor. 

 I see no reason for this and feel that the facts are more accurately 

 expressed by putting them {ruwenzorii is a synonym of jnassaicus 

 anyway) in the afer group. 



Family STURNIDAE, Starlings 



CREATOPHORA CINEREA (Meuschen) 



Rallus cinereus Metjschen, Museum Geversianum sive index rerum naturalium, 

 etc., p. 40, no. 17, 1787, based on der Capsclie Strandlaufer, Tringa caruncu- 

 lata capensis, Naturforsclier, vol. 11, p. 9, tabl. 2, 1777 : No definite locality 

 mentioned ; Cape of Good Hope implied. 



Specimens colxected: 



1 male, 1 female, Turturo, Ethiopia, June 15, 1912. 



2 males, 1 female, Malata, Ethiopia, June 22, 1912. 

 2 males, 1 female, Chaffa, Ethiopia, June 23, 1912. 



1 male, 18 miles southwest of Hor, Kenya Colony, July 1, 1912. 



2 females, Lekiundu River, Kenya Colony, August 5, 1912. 



Mathews ^^ has pointed out that Meuschen's name is earlier than 

 carunculatus Vieillot, and so must be used for this bird. 



One of these specimens, the female from ChaflFa, has the wattles 

 somewhat developed on the throat, but aside from the circumocular 

 area, the head is feathered, and no sign of frontal or capital wattles 

 is visible. 



The males are all in the brownish plumage of immaturity and are 

 much abraded. One of them, taken at Malata, June 22, is molting 

 into the grayer adult plumage. All of them, like the females too, have 

 the eye encircled by a bare space and have two bare gular stripes run- 

 ning posteriorly from the posteroventral ends of the mandibular rami. 

 The female with the developing gular wattles has them growing out 

 of each of these two bare lines. Inasmuch as the figure given by 

 Stark ^^ indicates but a single throat wattle, it would seem as if the 

 mid ventral throat feathers are subsequently shed and the two wattles 

 grow into a single fused structure. The bare throat spaces are 

 yellow in young birds and in summer specimens; black in breeding 

 birds. 



Recently, de Schauensee ^^ has shown that the denudation of the 

 head and the synchronous development of the wattles is not a matter 



■'s Journ. fiir Orn., 1905, pp. 691-692. 

 " Systema avium ^thlopicarum, pt. 2, p. 602, 1930. 

 75 Austral Avian Rec, vol. 5, no. 4, p. 83, 1926. 

 " The bird.s of South Africa, vol. 1, p. 23, 1900. 

 •" Auk, 1928, p. 217. 



