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BIRDS OF NORTH AND MIDDLE AMERICA.
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bright cinnamon-rufous, more grayish (sometimes wholly gray) on pileum and hindneck, the wing-coverts sometimes spotted with black; sides of head, throat, and chest black, rest of under parts white medially, grayish and fulvescent laterally; adult females similar but without black on under parts.
Range. — Nicaragua to western Ecuadór, Amazon Valley, and British Guiana. (About six species.)[1]
KEY TO THE SPECIES OF MYRMECIZA.
a. Under parts partly black.
- b. Back, wings, etc., brown or cinnamon-rufous.
- c. Abdomen white; back, wings, etc., cinnamon-rufous or rufous-chestnut. (Myrmeciza boucardi.)
- d. Whole chest gray.
- e. Pileum and hindneck wholly gray; no black spots or bars on wing-coverts. (Central Colombia.)
- d. Whole chest gray.
- c. Abdomen white; back, wings, etc., cinnamon-rufous or rufous-chestnut. (Myrmeciza boucardi.)
Myrmeciza boucardi boucardi, adult male (extralimital).[2]
- ee. Pileum and hindneck mostly rufous-brown; wing-coverts with conspicuous bars or transverse spots of black. (Central Venezuela.)
Myrmeciza boucardi griseipectus, adult male (extralimital).[3]
- dd. Upper chest black, like throat, the lower chest white medially.
- e. Sides of chest paler and less extensively gray. (Coast district of Venezuela; Trinidád.)
- dd. Upper chest black, like throat, the lower chest white medially.
Myrmeciza boucardi swainsoni, adult male (extralimital).[4]
- ee. Sides of chest darker and more extensively gray. (Eastern Panamá and Caribbean coast district of Colombia.)
Myrmeciza boucardi panamensis, adult male (p. 107).
- ↑ I have not seen Thamnophilus leuconotus Spix, referred to Myrmelastes by recent authors. I am quite unable to appreciate any reasons for retaining a genus Myrmelastes as distinguished from Myrmeciza, unless the former is restricted to the type (M. plumbeus). The latter differs from other species in much greater development of the plumage of the lower back and rump, stouter bill, more rounded wing, and narrower, more broadly operculate nostrils. On the other hand, M. boucardi and its allies have a longer and more slender bill, longer tail, with relatively narrower rectrices, longer outermost primary, and very different style of coloration. While not so homogeneous as most genera, however, the group, after the elimination of the long-tailed and otherwise very different species constituting the genus Drymophila Swainson (see page 15), may, on the whole, be considered a fairly natural group.
- ↑ Myrmeciza boucardi Berlepsch, Ibis, 5th ser., vi, no. xxi, Jan., 1888, 129 (Bogotá, Colombia; coll. Count von Berlepsch); Sclater, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus., xv, 1890, 279, part (Bogotá). — [Drymophila] boucardi Sharpe, Hand-list, iii, 1901, 34.
- ↑ Myrmeciza swainsoni griseipectus Berlepsch and Hartert, Novit. Zool., ix, no. 1, April 10, 1902, 76 (Caicará, Orinoco R., Venezuela; coll. Tring Mus.).
- ↑ Myrmeciza swainsoni Berlepsch, Ibis, 5th ser., vi, no. xxi, Jan., 1888, 130, in text (based on Myrmothera longipes Swainson, but not of Vieillot). — M[yrmeciza] boucardi swainsoni Ridgway, Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., xxi, Oct. 20, 1908, 194, in text. — Myrmeciza longipes albiventris Chapman, Auk, x, no. 4, Oct., 1893, 343; Bull. Am. Mus. N. H., vi, Feb., 1894, 51 (Princestown, Trinidád; coll. Am. Mus. N. H.). — [Drymophila] albiventris Sharpe, Hand-list, iii, 1901, 34 (Trinidád). — Myrmeciza longipes longipes (not Myrmothera longipes Swainson?) Hellmayr, Novit. Zool., xiii, 1906, 33 (Trinidád; crit.).
