Corvus hassi Reichenow, 1907 : 51

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 : 27

Corvus hassi Reichenow, 1907: 51

TL: Tsingtau [= Qingdao, Shandong, China; 36°05’N, 120°24’E].

Now Corvus macrorhynchos colonorum Swinhoe, 1864 . See Meinertzhagen 1926: 82, Vaurie 1959: 169, Blake & Vaurie 1962: 273, Dickinson et al. 2004b: 124.

SYNTYPES: ZMB 49.235 [batch acquisition B. 398]. [No sex or age given]. Loc.: Tsingtau. Date: [not given, before/in 1904]. Coll. Hass. [S, Mus, Meise MS]. ZMB 2002.544 [new registration; batch acquisition B. 398]. [No sex or age given]. Loc.: Tsingtau. Date: [not given, before/in 1904]. Coll. Hass. [S, Mus].

COMMENTS: See Dickinson et al. (2004a: 96–102) for a detailed discussion on this species-group. Reichenow (1907) referred to “several specimens”. The ZMB acquisition book (No. B.398) lists 155 skins (out of originally 163) donated by the head forest warden Walter Hass (fl. 1904–1913) of the German Imperial Forestry Department of Qingdao, however, without listing specimens per species. The hand-written acquisition records by Reichenow and the correspondence between the ZMB and the Imperial Forestry Department, shed some light on these consignments: the forestry department bore all costs in exchange for the determination of the skins, some bird literature and collecting tools. The first shipment containing birds was sent out in two separate consignments, one box with non-passerines (65 skins of 35 species of which 14 were considered new for the region) and one with passerines (163 skins, no further details). While the nonpasserine box arrived at the ZMB in August 1904 (ZMB archives, Zool. Mus. SIII, Hass, W., p. 5), the first passerine box got separated from the non-passerine box, was delayed and arrived in Berlin in December 1906 due to logistic problems of the shipping companies (ZMB archives, Zool. Mus. SIII, Hass, W., pp. 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18). A third consignment of mixed taxa reached Berlin in August 1907 (128 bird skins of 87 species of which 13 were considered to be new for the region)—too late to have included any type of the taxon (p. 23). Thus, the collecting date of the types was in or before 1904.