The type specimens of Urospizias dampieri Gurney Sr., 1882

Abstract

John Henry Gurney Sr. (1819‒90) examined a series of raptors collected by Lieutenant (later Rear-Admiral) George Edward Richards (1852‒1927) in New Britain that had been passed to him for examination by Canon H. B. Tristram (Gurney 1882a). Among them were three adult females, all taken at Blanche Bay in June 1879, of a species that he considered with some reservations to be Urospizias etorques Salvadori, 1875, from New Guinea, which is now treated as a junior synonym of Accipiter hiogaster leucosomus (Sharpe, 1874). Gurney (1882a) in fact based this assessment on four New Britain specimens, the three received via Tristram plus an adult male, collector unstated, preserved in the then British Museum (now Natural History Museum, NHMUK). His reservations were largely the result of not having to hand an adult U. etorques from New Guinea with which to compare the New Britain specimens. Shortly thereafter, Gurney (1882b) revisited the issue, the Norwich Museum (later Castle Museum, Norwich) having now obtained an adult female U. etorques from the Astrolabe Mountains, New Guinea, collected by Andrew Goldie. This persuaded him that the New Britain specimens indeed formed a new species, which he named Urospizias dampieri, now Accipiter hiogaster dampieri, after the famous navigator William Dampier (1651‒1715), who in 1699 had been the first European to discover the New Britain archipelago. As evidence, Gurney noted the smaller size of the New Britain females, as well as reiterating subtle plumage distinctions that he had previously mentioned (Gurney 1882a), derived from Salvadori’s (1880) discussion of U. etorques. Although presenting mensural details for the New Guinea bird newly to hand, Gurney (1882b) did not repeat them for the New Britain birds, but instead referred to those already presented in Gurney (1882a). Possibly due to this lack of precise mention of the relevant New Britain specimens in the species description by Gurney (1882b), the syntypes on which this taxon was based appear to have been overlooked subsequently. Checking the published catalogue of Tristram (1889: 59) reveals that he retained two of Richards’s specimens (a and b under Astur etorques), which subsequently passed with much of his bird collection to what is now National Museums Liverpool (NML); these specimens are now registered as NML-VZ