BIRDS OF ETHIOPIA AND KENYA COLONY 351 



2. N. m. nectarinoides : The Teita country north to the Tana 

 River and the Northern Guaso Nyiro River. 



3. N. m. erlangerl: The Lower Juba Valley and adjacent parts of 

 extreme northeastern Kenya Colony. 



The three may be identified by the following characters: The 

 pectoral band is bright crimson or sometimes even de.ep scarlet in 

 the nominate form, while it is dull brick red or orange-red in the 

 other two. The yellow lateral pectoral patches are broad in melano- 

 gastra^ narrow in nectarinoides, and lacking in erlangeri. N. erlan- 

 geri heveni van Someren ** is a straight synonym. This form {erlan- 

 geri) is said to be like nectarinoides but to differ from it in having no 

 marked yellow bar separating the red tips from the dark bases of the 

 breast feathers, and further in having no yellow feathers on either 

 side of this breast band. The last-named character may be suffi- 

 cient to validate erlangeH, but the lack of a yellow bar between the 

 red tips and dark bases of the breast feathers is not a significant 

 feature, as the type of nectarinoides has no such yellow band, and 

 neither does another male from Arusha. The race nectarinoides 

 has the breast patch dull orange-red, not bright red as in melano- 

 gastra, and has very much less yellow on the sides of the breast 

 than the latter race. The latter is also larger in size generally. In 

 support of erlangeri, it should be noted that Mackworth-Praed ** 

 writes that a male from the Juba River, now in the British Museum^ 

 is much like nectarinoides but has no trace of a yellow pectoral tuft. 



Van Someren ^^ finds that birds from southern Kavirondo are 

 larger (wings, 64^66 mm) than typical birds from Nguruman 

 (wings, 58-60 mm). It may be that the western birds will prove to 

 be separable. In a later paper *^ he considers melanogastra a race 

 of A^, pulchella, and makes nectarinoides and erlangeri races of the 

 N. erythrocerca. 



NECTARINIA REICHENOWI (Fischer) 



Drepanorhynchus reichenowi Fisoheb, Joum. fiir Orn., 1884, p. 56 : Lake Naiva- 

 sha, Kenya Colony. 



SPEcaMENs COLLECTED' : 6 males, 2 females, Escarpment, 7,S90 feet, Kenya Colony, 

 September 6-10, 1912. 



I have seen no material from Mount Elgon and therefore can not 

 form an opinion as to the validity of N. r. alinderi Laubmann. 

 Sclater *^ considers it indistinguishable from reichenowi. 



The range of this sunbird, as given by Sclater, should be extended 

 northward to include Mount Uraguess in northern Kenya Colon5\ 



^» Journ. East Africa and Uganda Nat. Hist. Soc, no. 35, p. 64 (140), 1930. 



"Ibis, 1917, p. 375. 



«Nov. Zool., vol. 29, p. 193, 1922. 



«Nov. Zool., vol. 37, p. 351, 1932. 



*" Systema avium .^thiopicarum, pt. 2, p. 686, 1930. 



