﻿CATALOGUE OF A COLLECTION OF BIRDS FROM 



BARBUDA AND ANTIGUA, BRITISH 



WEST INDIES 



By J. H. RILEY 



This list is founded on a collection of three hundred and twenty- 

 four bird skins, formed by Mr. H. G. Selwyn Branch on the islands of 

 Barbuda and Antigua, British West Indies, during the late summer, 

 fall, and early winter of 1903, and recently acquired by the United 

 States National Museum. This collection is interesting as being 

 the largest ever formed on these ornithologically little-known islands 

 and for the fact that it contains a fine new species of Dcndroica 

 from Barbuda, the first peculiar species known from the island ; some 

 of the species are also recorded from the islands for the first time. 



Antigua lies about thirty-eight miles north of Guadeloupe, and 

 Barbuda about thirty miles north of Antigua, of which politically it 

 is only a parish. Both islands belong to that outlying calcareous 

 chain of islands that lies north and east of the volcanic chain of the 

 Leeward islands. This outlying calcareous group consists, Mr. 

 R. T. Hill states, 1 of the islands of Sombrero, Anguilla, St. Martins, 

 St. Bartholomew, Barbuda, part of Antigua, the Grand Terre of 

 Guadeloupe, and Marie Galante, and is of quite a different forma- 

 tion from the volcanic islands from Saba southward. They are said 

 to be dry islands, with a comparatively sparse vegetation that seems 

 to have had its effect on the bird life to a certain degree. This group 

 of islands is also interesting as the meeting place of the Greater and 

 Lesser AntiJlean faunas, for while some of the Greater Antillean 

 species reach the islands from the north, they also mark the northern 

 limit of a few of the Lesser Antillean forms. 



Mr. F. A. Ober visited both Barbuda and Antigua in 1877, and a 

 paper was prepared by Mr. Geo. N. Lawrence and published in 

 volume 1 of the Proceedings of the U. S. National Museum. Forty- 

 two species were recorded from Antigua and thirty-nine from Bar- 

 buda ; only one species was described as new, Speotyto amaura from 

 Antigua, a species not represented in the present collection. Mr. 

 Cyrus S. Winch, one of Mr. C. B. Cory's collectors, visited Antigua 

 in 1890, and a nominal list of thirty-two species was published in 



1 Cuba, Porto Rico, etc., 2nd ed., 1899, p. 318. 



277 



