This page has been validated.
THE ZOOLOGIST
No. 696.— June, 1899.
THE NESTING OF THE BLACK KITE (MILVUS
MIGRANS) IN THE TERRITORY OF VERONA.
By Count Ettore Arrigoni degli Oddi,
Member of the Royal Venetian Institute of Sciences.
The Black Kite (Milvus migrans, Boddaert)[1] has, until now, been considered a bird rarely seen in any part of Italy, occurring in some places as a rare straggler, and almost unknown; in others as a breeding species, but without becoming permanently established.
- ↑ Mr. Seebohm ('British Birds,' vol. i. p. 80), after having criticised Messrs. Newton and Dresser, who call this species by the name of M. migrans, Boddaert (1783), and Dr. Sharpe, who called it M. korschun, Gmelin (1771), adds that some future ornithologist, evincing more zeal than discretion, may adopt the name of M. milano, Gerini (1767), in homage to the law of priority. Mr. Seebohm has here fallen into a singular error; the bird drawn by Gerini on plate i. No. 38, of vol. i. of his remarkable work, 'La Storia degli Uccelli,' is not our M. migrans, but simply a variety of Buteo vulgaris, and the identical bird which Savi elevated to the rank of specific rank under the title of Falco pojana. Italian ornithologists all agree in referring Gerini's milano to Buteo vulgaris, and they place the same name under the synonyms of this species. Gerini speaks of M. migrans in the course of his work, but under the title of "Falco detto Nibbio nero." These are his words (l.c. p. 71):—"Falco detto Nibbio nero, Falx = Falco Milvus niger Schwenk et Sibbald, &c. Asturis magnitudine, remigibus majoribus nigris, cauda supra fusca, collo et uropygio albicantibus; cera lutea, rostro nigro, pedibus gracilioribus luteis." He does not mention it as
Zool. 4th ser. vol. III., June, 1899.
r
