Corvus difficilis Stresemann, 1943 : 125

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 : 30

Corvus difficilis Stresemann, 1943: 125

TL: Malbon im District Cloncurry [north-western Queensland; 21°06’S, 140°20’E].

Now Corvus bennetti x Corvus coronoides coronoides (hybrid). See Blake & Vaurie 1962: 277.

HOLOTYPE: ZMB 43.516. Adult male. Loc.: Malbon [District Cloncurry, N. - Australia]. Date: 27 February 1938. Coll.: Dr. G. Neuhäuser No. 240. [S, Mus, Meise MS].

COMMENTS: Stresemann (1943) based his new name on a single specimen only. The bird has white feather bases on neck and breast, a beak similar to bennetti , but wing measurements and chin feathers like those of coronoides . Therefore it is assumed that the specimen is a hybrid and as such the name has no nomenclatural standing. Dr. Gabriele Neuhäuser (born 1911, active until 1970s) was a Jewish-German student at the universities of Freiburg and Berlin. She finished her PhD in mammalogy in 1933 and went subsequently collecting mammals for the ZMB in Turkey and Palestine (ZMB archives, card index Zool. Mus. S.III, Neuhäuser, G.). In 1937 she accepted an offer from the American Museum of Natural History to come to Australia on a two year visa to collect mammals in northern Australia. After the political situation in Gemany changed for the worse, she stayed on in Australia collecting Australian birds and mammals for the ZMB and the Queensland Museum. During collecting work on the Atherton Tablelands she sought help from a local mining prospector, John Scott, whom she later married. In later life Neuhäuser gave up collecting and worked, from 1950–1970, as a librarian in Brisbane (see: http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/biogs/ P004706b.htm and http://facesofredcliffe.redcliffe.qld.gov.au/display.php?faceID=126 [both webpages accessed 14 April 2009]).