iSgt.l GuNDLAcrt OH some Cuban Birtfs. l8' 



NOTES ON SOME SPECIES OF BIRDS OF THE 

 ISLAND OF CUBA. 



BY DR. JOHN GUNDLACH. 



Calypte helenae Gundl. 



In the synonymy given by Mr. Charles B. Cory in his 'Birds of 

 the West Indies' may be added between Calypte hclena: Goukl, 

 Mon. Troch. Ill, pi. 136 (1861), and Gray, Handb. Bds. I, 

 p. 145 (1S69), the reference: Gundl. Repert. Fisico-Nat. Cuba, 

 I, 1 866, p. 291 ; and between Gundl. J. f. O. 1S74, p. 144, and 

 Muls. Hist. Nat. Ois. Mouch., IV, p. 77 (1877), the reference: 

 Gundl. Contrib. a la Orn. Cuba, 1876, p. 109. 



The reference Orthorhynchus boothi Cab., J. f. O., is boothi 

 Gundl. in Cab., J. f. O., 1856, p. 99, where Dr. Ca])anis in a note 

 says that the name boothi proposed by me for hclence may be 

 omitted because the species named by De Lattre helence is not of 

 the same genus. 



Mr. Cory gives the color of the head, throat, and elongated 

 feathers of the neck as metallic red, almost pink in some lights, 

 but this color changes in some lights also to golden and green. 



Mr. Lawrence records, in Ann. N. V. Lye. Nat. Hist. i860, 

 that the male has a well defined terminal band on the tall, nearly- 

 equal to one quarter of its length. In the young males and 

 females it exists also inside of the white tip and occupies more 

 space than in the adult male. 



The young male has a more bluish green back than the female, 

 and the tail of the old male is emarginate, and that of the young 

 male (or before the perfect plumage) and the female rounded. I 

 have published in J. f. O. IV, 1856, pp. 99-101, a description of 

 this species. 



I'he first specimen, a yoimg male with only four perfect red 

 feathers on the throat, I killed in March, 1844, near Cardenas, 

 searching a flower of Hibiscus. Four years afterwards I found 

 a locality on the border of the mangrove, where the flowers of 

 Avicennia., Hibiscus., etc., supply much nectar. There I have 

 killed many specimens of both sexes in its perfectly colored head 

 and throat and in its rufi'of elongated feathers. The first descrip- 

 tion of this new species I pul)lished in Lembeye's Avcs de Cuba, 

 1850, p. 70- Tlie name helence is given in respect to Dona 



