THE HONEY-GUIDES 231 



Orange-Rumped Honey-Guide 



Indicator xanthonotus Blyth "^ 



Figures 1, 2,/, 3,d; Plates 18, 23 



This species is a bird of the Himalayan highlands about whose life 

 history almost nothing has been recorded. It is the most strikingly 

 colored of all the honey guides. 



Distribution 



This honey-guide ranges in the Himalayas from Bannu and Huzara, 

 near the border of Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province 

 of India, east to Murree (Abbottabad), Garhwal, Darjeeling, Assam 

 (Naga Hills, Margherita) and to northern Burma (Myitkirja District). 

 The population inhabiting the eastern part of the range — northern 

 Assam and northern Burma — has been separated as a distinct race, 

 julvus, which is characterized by being darker, more blackish on the 

 upperparts and underparts of the body, and by having the yellow on 

 the forehead more restricted posteriorly. Ripley (1951, pp. 2-3) 

 found this honey-guide in the Naga Hills near Pfutsero — 28 miles 

 east of Kohima at 6,000 feet and on the slopes of Japvo, 10 miles 

 southeast of Kohima, at 7,000 feet. In Garhwal, Koelz collected 

 specimens near cliffs at an altitude of 9,000 feet, and also above tree 

 line in Kumaun. Inasmuch as other naturalists have described the 

 bird as a denizen of heavy forest, it is worthy of note that it may 

 range above the tree line. 



In reply to an inquiry on this ecological point, Riple}^ (in litt.) 

 informs me that the w^esternmost population of the species occurs in 

 the coniferous and diy deciduous woods of the western Himalayas, 

 which are very open compared with the dense, wet forest patches in 

 which the eastern subspecies, julvus, dwells, while the birds occurring 

 in the central portion of the range do seem to be less rigidly restricted 

 to truly forested areas than do their counterparts farther to the east. 



It is possible that the extreme western portion of the species may 

 prove separable from typical xanthonotus (described from Darjeeling), 

 in which case Hume's name radclijfii,^^ based on a bird from Huzara, 

 would be available for them. Pending study of more material than 

 is available to me at present, the ranges of the two recognized races 

 are as foUows. 



" Indicator xanthonotus Blyth, Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, vol. 11, p. 116, 1842. 

 (Darjeeling.) 

 «» Indicator radcliffii Hume, Ibis, ser. 2, vol. 6, p. 529, 1870. (Huzara.) 

 309265—55 17 



