NORTHERN CAUCASIAN PHEASANT 



Phasianus colchicus septentrionalis Lorenz 



Names. — Subspecific ; septentrionalis^ Latin, septentrionalis, northern. English : North Caucasian or 

 Astrakhan Pheasant. 



Type. — Locality : Kuban, Terek. Describer : Th. C. Lorenz. Place of Description : Journal fur 

 Ornithologie, 1888, p. 571. 



Subspecific Characters.— Male : Greenish gloss dominant on black markings of mantle and breast; 

 general colouring paler, more of a golden red. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 



This is the northernmost of the several colchicus forms. It inhabits the basins of 

 the Kuma, Terek, Sulak and Kuban Rivers, ranging up to an elevation of two thousand 

 to twenty-five hundred feet, and in the lowlands it extends to the northward along the 

 western shore of the Caspian Sea to Astrakhan at the delta of the Volga, while on the 

 south it reaches almost to the Apsheron Peninsula. In the central part of Northern 

 Caucasia from Stavropol to Georgievsk it has been completely exterminated late in the 

 nineteenth century. 



SYNONYMY 



Phasianus colchicus Pallas, Zoogr. II. 1811, p. 83 ; Lorenz, Beitr. Ornith. Nordseite Kankas. 1887, p. 56; 

 Grant, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. XXII. 1893, p. 320 (partim ; cum colchicus) ; Grant, Hand-book Game-birds, Vol. II. 

 1897, p. 9 (partim; cum colchicus) ; Dresser, Man. Palae. Birds, II. 1903, p. 658 (partim ; cum colchicus). 



Phasianus colchicus L., subsp. septentrionalis Lorenz, Jour, fiir Orn. 1888, p. 571 (Kuban, Terek). 



Phasianus colchicus septentrionalis Rothschild, Bull. Brit. Orn. Club, XIV. 1904, p. 37; Buturlin, Ibis, 1904, 

 p. 385 (basins of Kuban, Terek and Kuma) ; Buturlin, Ibis, 1908, pp. 584, 586 ; Hartert, Nov. Zool. XXIV. 1917, 

 p. 449. 



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