Sericornis minimus yorki Mathews

LeCroy, M., 2008, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History. Part 7. Passeriformes: Sylviidae, Muscicapidae, Platysteiridae, Maluridae, Acanthizidae, Monarchidae, Rhipiduridae, And Petroicidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 313 (1), pp. 1-287 : 133

Sericornis minimus yorki Mathews

Sericornis minimus yorki Mathews, 1922e: 19 (Piara Scrubs, Cape York, North Queensland).

Now Sericornis magnirostra minimus Gould, 1875 . See Mayr, 1986b: 419, and Schodde and Mason, 1999: 173–175.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 601533 , adult male, collected in Piara Scrub , 10.44S, 142.34E ( USBGN, 1957b), Cape York , Queensland, Australia, on 22 March 1913, by Robin Kemp (no. 2662). From the Mathews Collection (no. 17220) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews (1922e: 19) described this form as follows: ‘‘ The bird figured and described differs from Gould’s type in having the back olive and not brown, and may be called Sericornis minimus yorki subsp. nov. ’’ AMNH 601533 bears a yellow ‘‘ Figured’ ’ label ; this refers to the illustration in Mathews (1922e: pl. 455, top fig. (labeled S. frontalis ), opp. p. 7, text pp. 17, 19). On p. 17, at the end of the description of the adult male, Mathews stated: ‘‘Figured. Collected at Piara Scrubs , Cape York, North Queensland, on the 22nd of March , 1913’’. The agreement of the data on AMNH 601533 with that cited in the description of the figured male identifies this specimen as Mathews’ holotype. It did not have Mathews or Rothschild type labels and had not previously been included with the AMNH types. AMNH 601532 , a second specimen not mentioned by Mathews, was collected by Kemp at ‘‘ Paira’ ’ Scrubs on 19 February 1913 (Mathews no. 17703) and is a paratype .

Piara (sometimes spelled Paira) was the home on Muddy Bay of Bert Vidgen, where many early collectors on Cape York stayed. In del Hoyo et al. (2007: 584–585), the subspecies minimus is included in the species S. beccarii .