Notes on some Conures.



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NOTES ON SOME CONURES


OF THE EUOPS GEOUP.


By The Honble. Walter Rothschild, F.R.S., Ph.D., etc.


Some few months ago a number of living Conures were

•distributed in this country under the name of Gonurus gundlachi,

and were said to have come from Mona Island. Upon examining

three of these Conures I at once saw that they had nothing to do

with Gonurus gundlachi, whose proper name is Gonurus maugei,

(De Souance) and whose home WAS Porto Rico, but the bird is now

quite extinct.


On comparing the birds with Gonurus chloropterus of St.

Domingo it was at once evident that, though they agreed absolutely

in colour, they were much smaller; in fact they agree perfectly with

Gonurus euops of Cuba, except that the bill is larger, being half-way

between the bill of G. euops and G. chloropterus in size. On ques¬

tioning the vendor as to the real origin of these birds, I was

informed they had been shipped from South America with other

South American live stock, and having believed them to be in fact

G. gundlachi, he assigned them as having come from Mona Island,

the supposed home of G. gundlachi. The fact is that it is highly

doubtful where the two wings, which form the Type of G. gundlachi,

came from. Gundlach, was however on Porto Rico, and these

wings really belong to the extinct Porto Rico Gonurus maugei.


It is evident, therefore, that the living birds are a new race

of the G. euops group from an unknown South American locality.

The Mona Island bird, according to Dr. A. Wetmore, of Washington,

is hardly if at all distinct from G. chloropterus, but as only one

specimen could be procured on the island it might have been an

escaped cage bird of the St. Domingo race.



