﻿VENEZUELAN ORNITHOLOGY — FRIEDMANN AND SMITH 427 



bian egg. Hollmayr and Conover (loc. cit.) write tliat C. noctivagus 

 is said to lay pale-blue glossless eggs, that the eggs of the race 

 erythropvs are not known, but that C. cinnamomeus and C. idoneus lay 

 glossy vinous-brown or cinnamon-brown eggs. They are obviously 

 mistaken about C. idoneus, but the egg from our Cantaura bird is 

 fairly close to their description of the egg of the species C. noctivagus, 

 glossless and very pale blue. The two species are certainly closely 

 related; in fact, Zimmer (Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, vol. 51, 1938, 

 pp. 47-52) considers them conspecific, an arrangement it would be 

 advisable to follow were it not for the fact that we now have idoneus 

 and erythropus from almost the same place. Some time ago the female 

 erythropus and the male idoneus from Cantaura (the female idoneus 

 from there had not then been collected) were sent to Zimmer, who 

 pronounced them both erythropus, with the comment that the male 

 was unusually pale. From Zimmer's 1938 paper it appears that he 

 had seen but a single specimen of idoneus, and so we do not hesitate 

 to disagree with his allocation of the Cantaura male. This individual 

 was in breeding condition, apparently adult, but has the lower back, 

 rump, upper tail coverts, scapulars, and upper wing coverts distinctly 

 barred with ochraceous-buffy like Colombian idoneus and not almost 

 uniform dark rufescent, as in a male cotype of erythropus. 



There is still one more aspect to the problem raised by these two 

 birds. While undoubtedly the same species as idoneus from Colombia, 

 they differ from western birds in having the hind neck, and to a lesser 

 degree the mantle, less tawny, more grayish than typical idoneus. 

 They appear to represent a recognizable race and necessitate a new 

 consideration of the identification and the status of C. cinnamomeus 

 spencei Brabourne and Chubb (described from northern Venezuela). 

 Zimmer has used the name spencei for a northern Venezuelan race of 

 C. noctivagus, which he finds to be "intermediate between idoneus 

 and erythropus, though closer to erythropus." On the other hand, 

 Todd (Ann. Carnegie Mus., vol. 29, 1942, pp. 20-21) examined the 

 type and one other specimen of spencei in the British Museum and 

 found them to be "the same as erythropus, despite the rather prominent 

 bufFy bars on the back and wings." The qualification of his conclusion 

 mentioned by Todd is disturbing, as it involves a character certainly 

 present in both sexes of C. idoneus. In the two descriptions of spencei 

 (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 8, vol. 14, 1914, p. 322, and Bull. Brit. 

 Orn. Club, vol. 38, 1918, p. 29) the mantle is described as "cinnamon 

 brown," which does not fit our Cantaura birds but does suggest 

 erythropus as Todd considered it to be. There seem to be two possible 

 explanations, that the brief description of spencei is not very accurate 

 and that this name is available for northeastern Venezuelan idoneus, 

 or that spencei is, as Todd suggests, a synonym of erythropus and that 



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