Birds of Celebes: Alcedinidae. 
305 
east have the silvery tips of the long superciliary stripe longer than in females 
from the north, and seem to present* a slight racial departure. 
As to the habits of fhis species: “It lives”, says Meyer (10^ 11), “like 
Monachalcyofi princeps, only in the forest, not on river-sides ; and it is not 
at all a rare bird, according to my experience. It likes to sit dreaming alone 
on branches of trees. Its cry is, five or six times one after another, kebekek. 
In the stomach I found insects, crabs, worms, etc”. 
“Male and female are easily to be distinguished, viz. from the colour of 
the wing-coverts and the sides of the head, which is blue in the male, black 
or bluish black in the female; the male has no white superciliary spots. Even 
the young ones, which were alive in my possession, show this difference”. 
Among the Kingfishers the same condition obtains in Monachalcyon, possibly in 
some species of Halcyon in Western Polynesia (Wg., Aves Polyn. 16), and to 
some extent in some species of Ceryle. 
The only other species of the genus Cittura is C. sangirensis Sharpe of 
the Sangi Islands, an important link between Celebes and those islands, distin- 
guishable by its larger size, black frontal band and malar region at the gape and 
by its mauve ear-coverts, sides of neck, and chest. Both sexes of this species, 
too, resemble the female of C. cyanotis in having a pearl-blue or silvery line 
of feather-tips over the eye, but the male has blue wing-coverts, the female 
black ones, as in the sexes of C. cyanotis. Perhaps, as Meyer has remarked 
(10), allied species are still to be discovered somewhere in Borneo or the 
neighbourhood . 
Of the two, C. sangirensis may perhaps be the one more likely to have 
varied in a lesser degree from the ancestral type. The female of C. cyanotis, 
which may probably be regarded as of a more ancient type than the male, 
partakes of the coloration of C. sangirensis not only in the points mentioned, 
but in having usually a wash of phlox-purple about the ear-coverts and throat, 
and it has been confused with C. sangirensis by Lenz (8) and Guillemard 
(14). Mr. Keeler, too, believes that the colour of the basal part of feathers 
of birds in general have a phylogenetic value ; if this be so, C. cyanotis should 
be sprung from a bird with a black or dark crown and malar region, but a 
pale chin (as it still has) . C. sangirensis has the forehead , a broad eyebrow, 
occipital side-patch, malar and subocular region black ; in this respect, therefore, 
it is possible that it should be regarded as the more ancestral form. 
7^ 96. CITTURA SANGIRENSIS Sharpe. 
Sangi Broad-billed Kingfisher. 
Cittura sanghirensis (I) Sharpe, P. Z. S. 1868, 270, pi. 27 (f; (II) id., Monogr. Alcedin. 
1868, 299, pi. 118 cf; (3) Kewton, Ibis 1869, 215; (4) Salvad., Ann. Mus. Civ. 
Gen. 1876, IX, 53; (V) Bowley, Orn. Misc. 1878, ME, 132, pL ($); (6) Meyer, 
-Ueyer & Wi gles wo rtli , Birds of Celebes (Oct. 30th, 1897). oq 
