Cissa pyrrhocyanea ̔ MS Lichtenstein’ Gould, 1850

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 : 14

Cissa pyrrhocyanea ̔ MS Lichtenstein’ Gould, 1850 : plate 53 and text

TL: Killarneyganga , Ceylon [= Kelani Ganga, Sri Lanka; 6°58’N, 79°52’E].

Now Urocissa ornata ( Wagler, 1829) . See Sharpe 1877: 87 [as Cissa ornata ], Blake & Vaurie 1962: 240, Madge & Burn 1999: 103, Dickinson 2003: 509, Dickinson et al. 2004b: 115.

SYNTYPE: ZMB 1534. [Adult]. Loc.: Ost-Indien [ Sri Lanka]. Date: [not given, acquisition date October 1826]. Coll.: Becker. [Ex, Mus].

COMMENTS: This is the same specimen as the holotype of P. ornata Wagler, 1829 . Gould saw the ZMB specimen on his Berlin visit in 1843. At that time, Lichtenstein had added a second MS name to the mounted specimen (this label seems to be lost), and it was this second MS name that John Gould subsequently used in his publication. Gould, however, included further information from a second specimen collected by a Mr Aubrey J. D. Paul, making both birds syntypes of Gould’s synonymous name (cf. Dickinson et al. 2004b: 129). The type locality comes from the second specimen, not the ZMB bird which had only ‘East India’ on its label.