Parus major blanfordi Pražák

Parus major blanfordi Pražák, 1894f: 240 .

NOW. Parus major blanfordi Pražák, 1894 . See Hartert (1905: 344), Vaurie (1950: 21, 1959: 512) and Dickinson (2003: 524).

Holotype. NHMW 33625 (formerly NHMW 1888. VI.16, not IV as given by Pražák 1894f: 240), 3, collected by Enrico Andreini (1828–1894), an Italian army officer, who worked in Iran in 1857–1894 (Piemontese 1969, Cronin 2008), on an unknown date [= 1857–1888, possibly in the mid 1880s] at “Teheran [= Tehran, Iran; 35.67°N, 51.42°E].

Remarks. Pražák (1894f: 240) said that he based his P. m. blanfordi on a NHMW specimen (listed above) and on a specimen in his private collection (reportedly a male, catalogued as JPPH 1955). There is no evidence that Pražák possessed any tit from Persia or elsewhere from Asia. I thus believe that the specimen JPPH 1955 may have existed only in Pražák’s mind and I consider the NHMW specimen as the holotype of this species.