Tregellasia leucops paira 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 : 252

Tregellasia leucops paira Mathews

Tregellasia leucops paira Mathews, 1916a: 59 (Paira [sic], North Queensland).

Now Tregellasia leucops albigularis ( Rothschild and Hartert, 1907) . See Mayr, 1986d: 571, and Schodde and Mason, 1999: 358–359.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 608373 , adult female, collected at Piara (5 Paira), 10.44S, 142.34E ( USBGN, 1957b), Cape York, Queensland, Australia, on 1 December 1911, by W.R. McLennan. From the Mathews Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews had a single specimen from Piara, and no other locality was mentioned. Mathews obtained specimens collected by McLennan from W.D.K. Macgillivray. I was not able to find this specimen in Mathews’ catalog.

The holotype bears McLennan’s field label, marked on one side by Mathews ‘‘Type of yorki’’, with ‘‘yorki’’ crossed out. On the reverse Mathews wrote ‘‘Type of paira’’. It also bears a Rothschild Collection label and two incorrect type labels! The Rothschild type label had the specimen as the type of Poecilodryas albifacies Sharpe , a New Guinea form. This name has been crossed out and an AMNH type label added, calling the specimen a [syn]type of Poecilodryas leucops albigularis . This also is incorrect (see above). Yet another AMNH type label has been added, giving the correct information.

Macgillivray (1914: 135) noted that ‘‘Paira’’ was ‘‘the picturesque home of Mr. and Mrs. Bert Vigden, whence [McLennan] explored the country in all directions’’. The locality is spelled Piara in USBGN (1957) and, on labels of specimens collected by him, his name is written ‘‘H.G. Vidgen’’. This information agrees with that given by Whittell (1954: 730).