NO. 4 AVIAN GENUS CLAMATOR — FRIEDMANN 63 



the throat and breast of the adult birds. Gyldenstolpe (1921, pp. 246- 

 247) considered some of this variability to be a matter of age, the 

 stripes being narrower in younger birds than in older ones. He also 

 thought the stripes were broadest and darkest in the males. Examina- 

 tion of large numbers of specimens, especially in London, convinced 

 me that no correlation with age or sex may be maintained. Chapin 

 {in Hit., 1961) wrote that while these stripes were variable through- 

 out Africa, they seemed to average heaviest in specimens from the 

 northeastern part of the continent — Ethiopia and Somalia. In five 

 specimens from there in the American Museum of Natural History 

 the throat was so broadly streaked as to be almost completely black. 

 Examples of this extreme type came from Giamo, Bissidimo, Godja- 

 Mariam, and Maraco, in Ethiopia, and from Warsangli-Mush Hated, 

 5,000 feet, in the Somali Republic. Another equally dark bird came 

 from much farther to the south, from Machame, Tanganyika; in it 

 the chin was fairly solid black, the throat less solidly so. In the 

 British Museum I have seen specimens just as heavily marked with 

 black from Mount Lotuke, in the Didinga Mountains of Sudan ; also 

 from Usambara Mountains, Pangani River, Tanganyika, and even 

 one from as far to the southwest as Damaraland. All of these ex- 

 amples were adult males. Furthermore, in all the areas involved, 

 other examples were much less heavily striped than those mentioned 

 here. 



One of the palest birds seen was from Tembura, in the Bahr-el- 

 Ghazal Province of Sudan. It had only narrow black streaks on the 

 chin and throat, these disappearing on the upper breast, in marked 

 contrast to the Mount Lotuke dark extreme which not only had the 

 black streaks almost coalesced on the chin and throat, but had these 

 markings continuing very broadly over the entire breast, tapering 

 caudally, but with narrow black shaft streaks on the entire abdomen, 

 sides, flanks, and thighs. These abdominal shaft streaks were even 

 more pronounced in the Usambara birds. Perhaps the extreme 

 variant in this character of all the birds seen was a female from 

 near Mombasa, collected together with five in the melanistic "albo- 

 notatus" plumage phase. In it the entire underparts were heavily 

 streaked with black, from chin to vent. One from Kyambu, near 

 Nairobi, Kenya, described by van Someren (1922, p. 51), was said to 

 have the black stripes reaching the abdomen as well. 



Turning now to the opposite extreme, a male from Gunnal, in 

 Portuguese Guinea, from the other side of the continent, was almost 

 as lightly marked as the Tembura bird. Recently, in a report on Gabon 



