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Show 226 MESSRS. BLANFORD AND DRESSER ON [Apr. 21, including the throat and sides of the face and the feathers immediately over the eye, jet-black; quills dark hair-brown; terminal half of central and the tips of the outer tail-feathers blackish brown ; rump, upper and under tail-coverts, lower part of the breast, and abdomen white ; under wing-coverts black ; under surface of wing dull sooty. Culmen 0*65, wing 3*6, tail 2'65, tarsus 1. The under tail-coverts in some specimens are tinged with rufous. Female. Probably similar to the male, but browner on the back. But little is as yet known respecting the changes of plumage due to age and sex in this or the preceding species. The present species appears as a rule to have the crown much greyer than is the case with S. leucomela ; and the crissum is almost always white : the chief and most constant characteristic, however, is the colour of the inner webs of the primaries, which is black or blackish, generally the former ; but in one or two specimens it is dull, smoky, blackish grey, while in Saxicola leucomela the inner webs of the primaries are invariably white. One single specimen of S. morio, from Lahore, in Dresser's collection, has the under tail-coverts faintly washed with rufous, but the inner webs of the primaries are very distinctly smoky black. All the rest of the specimens have the crissum and under tail-coverts white. A specimen from Mongolia, in Canon Tristram's collection, has the quills dull brownish and the feathers on the back edged with brown. Mr. Hume (Ibis, 1868, p. 233) states that he has ascertained beyond doubt that this bird is the young male of S.pieata, Blyth. He states that, out of 20 specimens collected, noue were either females or old birds, that he has intermediate forms, and that females shot in company with both forms were identical. W e have certainly no specimens of S. morio marked as females; but if S. picata be the adult, it is singular that no specimens of this form should have been procured by Hemprich and Ehrenberg, and also that no corresponding phase of the closely allied S. lugens should be known. We can only say that further evidence is necessary. W e have a male specimen of 5. morio, shot in Persia in June, when it must have been fully adult; and the bird has been found in the same stage in Turkestan. Hab. Eastern Europe, North-eastern Africa, and Western and Central Asia, extending to North-western India. 12. SAXICOLA ALBONIGRA. Saxicola alboniger, Hume, Stray Feathers, i. pp. 2, 185 (1872). Adult male (December). Head, neck, and upper parts, as far as the lower portion of the back, throat to the upper part of the breast, and axillaries jet-black ; quills, central rectrices, except at the base, and tips of outer rectrices brownish black ; remainder of the plumage pure white. Culmen 0'8, wing 3'8, tail 2-6, tarsus 1. Female. Similar to the male. Young. Differs in having the black more sooty in tinge. Hab. South-eastern Persia, Baluchistan, Sind. |
