Oreomyza perkinsi Rothschild

LeCroy, Mary, 2013, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 11. Passeriformes: Parulidae, Drepanididae, Vireonidae, Icteridae, Fringillinae, Carduelinae, Estrildidae, And Viduinae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2013 (381), pp. 1-155 : 30-31

Oreomyza perkinsi Rothschild

Oreomyza perkinsi Rothschild, 1900: 129 (Puulehua, Hawaii).

Now considered an intergeneric hybrid between Oreomystis mana and Hemignathus virens virens . See Hartert, 1919a: 171; Bryan and Greenway, 1944: 139; Amadon, 1950: 176–177; and Greenway, 1968: 100.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 453280 , male, collected at Puulehua, Kona District, Hawaii Island , Hawaii, on 25 September 1891, by

Henry Palmer (no. 1332). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: There is only one example of this supposed hybrid. Rothschild himself thought that it might be a hybrid, others have thought it to be an aberrant individual of one or the other of these two species, and Hartert (1919a: 171) thought that it was ‘‘probably a somewhat rare species which has been overlooked.’’ Amadon (1950: 176–177) placed both of the supposed parental forms in the genus Loxops and considered AMNH 453280 an interspecific hybrid between L. maculata mana and L. v. virens and considered it very close to virens , but with ‘‘slight divergences’’ toward mana . I agree that it is very close to virens morphologically, and given the amount of variation among specimens of virens in AMNH, it may be only an extreme of this variation.

According to Palmer’s diary ( Rothschild, 1900: (Di)), Puulehua is the spot at 5000 ft where he set up camp on 22 September 1891 on his way up the slopes of Mauna Loa.