714 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 
Lerwa nivicola (common locally, a most amusing and 
confiding bird). 
Yours &c., 
C. H. T. Whitehead. 
Sell ore, Bhopal, India, 
12th Aug., 1909. 
Sirs, —At the meeting of the B. O. Club held on 26th 
May, 1909,1 exhibited an adult male specimen of Muscicapa 
semitorquata as being new to the Egyptian avifauna. In the 
report of that meeting (Bull. B. O. C. vol. xxiii. p. 93) I am 
credited with having exhibited a specimen of M. collaris as 
new to Egypt! I need hardly point out that the Collared 
Flycatcher ( Muscicapa collaris) is a regular visitor to Egypt 
during the spring migration ( cf . Shelley’s f Birds of-Egypt/ 
p. 130). 
In his f Manual of Palsearctic Birds ’ (p. 256) Mr. Dresser 
includes M. semitorquata as a subspecies of M. collaris. It 
is really, however, in my opinion, a subspecies of M. atri- 
capilla. In fact, adult males of M. semitorquata (or, as I 
prefer to call it, M. atricapilla semitorquata ) only differ from 
those of M. atricapilla atricapilla in having the sides of the 
neck white (these white patches almost form a collar round 
the hind-neck), and in having a small white speculum on 
the wing. The amount of white on the tail is the same in 
both M. a. atricapilla and M. a. semitorquata — i. <?., white on 
the outer and inner webs of the first and second pairs, and 
white on the outer web only of the third pair of rectrices, 
whereas in M. collaris the white is restricted to the outer web 
of the first pair. Young males of M. collaris have no white on 
the tail at all, whereas in M. atricapilla young birds have the 
outer web of the first three pairs of rectrices white. 
Yours &c., 
Giza, Egypt, Michael J. Nicole. 
1st August, 1909. 
Sirs,— Probably some of the readers of f The Ibis ’ are 
aware that I have been engaged, from time to time as 
