Cyanocorax, MS, 1826

Steinheimer, Frank D., 2009, The type specimens of Corvidae (Aves) in the Museum für Naturkunde at the Humboldt-University of Berlin, with the description of a new subspecies of Dendrocitta vagabunda, Zootaxa 2149 (1), pp. 1-49 : 6-7

C. [Cyanocorax] hyacinthinus ̔ MS Natterer’ Cabanis, 1848: 683

TL: Venezuela, Canuku-Gebirge [= Venezuela and Kanuku Mountains, Guyana]; restricted to Barinas, Venezuela [= Barinas, 180 m, at foot of Andes on NW edge of Ilanos, 25 km SE of Barintas; Paynter 1982: 16] ( Zimmer 1953: 2–3).

Now Cyanocorax violaceus violaceus du Bus de Gisignies, 1847 . See Sharpe 1877: 125, Zimmer 1953: 2–3, Quaisser & Nicolai 2006: 71.

SYNTYPE: ZMB 1402. [No sex or age given]. Loc.: Venezuela. Date: [not given]. Coll.: Moritz. [Ex, Mus, Meise MS].

COMMENTS: Out of all possible specimens only ZMB 1402 carries an old museum label citing Johann Natterer’s MS name ‘ C. hyacinthinus ’. Cabanis (1848) explicitly referred to a single specimen of this species at the ZMB which apparently had been labelled with a Natterer MS name during Natterer’s visit to Berlin in 1839 ( Zimmer 1953: 3). This specimen was collected by Carl A. Moritz (1796–1866), a medical doctor by training, who worked on the island of St. Thomas, and in Colombia and Venezuela ( Olpp 1932: 344) where he also assembled large natural history collections. He stayed in Venezuela in the years 1835 to 1837, collecting plants and animals in the region north of the Apure and Orinoco rivers, particularly in Trujillo and Mérida ( Zimmer 1953: 3). The original description not only mentioned the ZMB specimen as a type, but, by including Richard Schomburgk’s (1811–1891) field notes concerning a specimen collected by the latter in the Kanuku Mountains of former British Guiana, Schomburgk’s specimen, now MHH 4741 ( Quaisser & Nicolai 2006: 71), becomes a syntype, too. An additional Schomburgk specimen (BMNH 1840.7.3.42) is also believed to have syntypical status ( Zimmer 1953: 3; Warren & Harrison 1971: 245), although Cabanis, who worked on the collection of the MHH and on Schomburgk’s field notes, only knew the identity of the MHH specimen; Cabanis had not studied any bird at the BMNH. It remains to be determined however which specimen(s) Schomburgk himself described when writing his field notes, as both the MHH and the BMNH birds would have been available to him. The ZMB syntype has not been compared with birds of the subspecies pallidus Zimmer & Phelps, 1944: 12, but here I follow Zimmer (1953) for synonymization.