FAMILY FRINGILLIDAE 



553 



River in Napo Province, Ecuador, taken December 1, 1964, now in the 

 American Museum (Ridgely, American Birds, 1980, p. 248) and a 

 male in changing plumage from Eroca ( = Hiroca) in the Sierra Perija, 

 Colombia, taken by Carriker on April 4, 1942, and now in the Smith- 

 sonian (Brown and Hilty, Bull. Brit. Orn. Club, vol. 103, 1983, p. 17). 



I have not seen the Blue Grosbeak in Panama. Slud (Bull. Amer. 

 Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 128, 1964, p. 372) says that in Costa Rica winter- 

 ing birds of this race are generally seen in small groups and prefer 

 cleared areas with thick shrubbery, where they stay low down and oc- 

 casionally come to the ground. In Panama, it has been recorded from 

 early October to late March. 



PASSERINA CYANELLA (Sparrman): Indigo Bunting, 

 Semillero Azulado 



Tanagra cyanea Linnaeus, 1766, Syst. Nat., ed. 12, 1, p. 315. (South Carolina) 

 [preoccupied in Passerina by Loxia cyanea Linnaeus, 1758.]* 



Emberiza cyanella Sparrman, 1787, Mus. Carl., fasc. 2, pis. 42, 43. ("America 

 Septentrionali.") 



Small; adult male in alternate plumage bright blue, darkest on head 

 and undersurface; female warm reddish brown on upper surface; 

 undersurface buff with some darker streaking; male in basic plumage 

 like female but often with some patches of blue. 



Description. — Length 1 15-123 mm. Adult male in alternate plumage, 

 lores and border of maxilla black; crown, sides of head to below eye, 

 throat, and sometimes breast blue-violet, fading to lighter blue on rest 



*The apparently reasonable merger of Cyanocompsa Cabanis 1861 with Pas- 

 serina Vieillot 1816 (Paynter, Check-list Bds. Wld., vol. 13, 1970) made the 

 name for the Indigo Bunting a junior homonym of that for the South American 

 Ultramarine Grosbeak. Both are Linnaean names and the only ones that have 

 recently been used for the taxa in question. The rules of nomenclature clearly call 

 for suppression of the junior homonym if one accepts the above generic merger : 

 "A species-group name that is a junior secondary homonym must be rejected by 

 any zoologist who believes that the two species-group taxa in question are con- 

 generic." (Article 59b, Intern. Code Zool. Nomen., 1964, 2nd ed., p. 57). Despite 

 this, Paynter (op. cit.) and Eisenmann et al. (Bull. Zool. Nomen., vol. 27, 1971, 

 pp. 259-261) proposed to suppress the earlier name Loxia cyanea Linnaeus 1758 

 in favor of Fringilla brissonii Lichtenstein 1823, in order to preserve Passerina 

 cyanea for the more "familiar" Indigo Bunting and to prevent "confusion." Such 

 actions merely have the effect of making the rules of nomenclature meaningless. 

 If zoologists confronted with similar problems cannot simply resort to the pub- 

 lished standards to reach a decision, but must instead decide which of two homo- 

 nyms is the more "familiar," then nomenclatural chaos is assured. Therefore, in 

 accordance with the clearly stated rules of nomenclature, I have adopted the com- 

 bination Passerina cyanella (Sparrman) as the only available name for the Indigo 

 Bunting. S.L.O. 



