Birds of Celebes: Ardeidae. §13 



Hume and others describe the bird as building on platforms made by bending down 

 the tops of the rushes in ponds or jheels, laying 4 eggs, sometimes 5, on nests of 

 twigs. Some favorite nest-sites mentioned by Legge and Dresser are on screw- 

 pines, on the ground in marshy localities, or on floating islands of aquatic herbage. 

 Distribution. China (Swinhoe, David, etc. b3, b 9); India (Jerdon, etc. b 15); Ceylon 

 (Legge, etc. bid); Andamans and Nicobars (Davison b 4); Burmah (Gates b 19]; 

 Tenasserim (Davison b 10); Malay Peninsula (Hume b 12); Sumatra (Beccari b 14, 

 Klaesi b 23, etc. b 29, b 30); Engano (Modigl. b 31); Java (Horsfield b 3, 

 Vorderman b 22); Borneo (Schwaner, etc. b 3, b 25'''% b 26, b 32); Philippine Is! 

 (Meyen a 1, b 5, Steere b 28, Bourns & Worcester b 34); Celebes: — N. Penin- 

 sula (Rosenb. b 11, b 16, Meyer b 2, b 13, etc. b 7, b 35), Mapane, Gulf of Tomini, 

 (P. & F. Sarasin), Lake Posso (P. & F. Sarasin), Tampira River, East Celebes 

 (P.&F. Sarasin), S. Peninsula — Tjamba Distr. and Maros (Platen b 21), Tempe 

 (Weber b 33), Bulekomba (Everett 4). 



The first examples of Purple Heron from Celebes of which there is notice 

 were obtained in the Gorontalo District by von Rosenberg in 1863 — 64, and 

 Meyer found it to be very plentiful in the Northern Peninsula and Gulf of 

 Tomini in 1870 — 71. Dr. Platen and Prof. Weber met with it in the Southern 

 Peninsula, and the cousins Sarasin discovered it at Lake Posso on their ex- 

 pedition through Central Celebes and got a clutch of tliree eggs at Mapane. 

 Later, they encountered it when passing through splendid virgin forest down 

 the Tampira Eiver in East Celebes (Z. Ges. Erdk. Berlin 1896, 355). The bird 

 is evidently a resident. 



Dr. Sharp e (c 1), unlike Prof. W. Blasius (b 21) and others, divides Phoyx 

 jmi-purea into an eastern and western race or species, the former of which 

 bears the name P. maniknsis Meyen and inhabits the localities China and India 

 to Java and Celebes as specified above, while the typical P. purpurea is stated 

 to belong to other more western parts of Asia, Central and Southern Europe, 

 and Africa. The eastern form, P. manilensis, according to Sharp e, is "distin- 

 guished by its uniform chestnut throat and fore neck, which has scarcely any 

 black streaking at all, by the much more distinct lateral black streaks on 

 the neck, by the slaty black colour of the chest, abdomen and under tail- 

 coverts" (II). 



This handsome species may be easily recognised (when adult) among the 

 other Herons occurring in Celebes by its blackish slate belly taking a strong 

 maroon-purple tinge on the breast, and by its chestnut-rufous neck with a black 

 stripe down each side of it and across the face, and a third one behind. Its 

 toes are long, the middle one being sometimes a little longer, sometimes a little 

 shorter than the tarsus ; the tarsus is not reticulate-scaled in front (except near 

 the joints) but encased in large oblique scales. The Purple Heron seems to 

 have no very close allies. The subgenus Phoyx was made for it by Dr. Stejneger 

 in his Review of Japanese Birds (Pr. U. S. Nat. Mus. 1887, X, 311). 



