On the Paraguayan specimens of Nothura darwinii (Aves: Tinamidae) and Glaucis hirsutus (Aves: Trochilidae) in the collection of the Natural History Museum of Geneva (Switzerland), with a review of South Brazilian reports of the latter
Author
Smith, Paul
Fauna Paraguay, Encarnación, Paraguay & Para La Tierra, Reserva Natural Laguna Blanca, Santa Rosa del Aguaray, San Pedro, Paraguay.
www.faunaparaguay.com.
faunaparaguay@gmail.com
Author
Cibois, Alice
Natural History Museum of Geneva, Department of Mammalogy and Ornithology, CP 6434, CH- 1211 Geneva 6, Switzerland.
alice.cibois@ville-ge.ch
Author
Straube, Fernando
Hori Consultoría Ambiental (www. hori. bio. br), Curitiba, Brazil.
fernando@hori.bio.br.
text
Revue suisse de Zoologie
2014
2014-03-31
121
1
3
9
journal article
231092
10.5281/zenodo.5822968
d516c06d-3e34-4455-abcc-cfb6870202f6
0035-418X
5822968
Nothura darwinii
Darwin’s Nothura
Figs 1-2
Two specimens
from
Paraguay
labelled as
Nothura darwinii
are present in the Geneva collection:
MHNG 1720.053
(
female
,
5 km
east of Estancia Santa Sofia
,
Departamento Concepción
,
30 September 1989
, field number PY 7083, collected by
Claude Vaucher
and
Alain de Chambrier
)
and
MHNG 1720.054
(unsexed,
20 km
south of Puente Zinho
,
Departamento Concepción
,
6 November 1987
, no field number and unknown collector)
. Both these specimens can be positively identified as Spotted
Nothura
Nothura maculosa
on account of the following characteristics: i) barring present on both webs of the underside of the outer primaries, as seen in
Fig. 2
(confined to the outer web in
darwinii
) (
Conover, 1950
); ii) tarsal measurements of
357 mm
and
350 mm
(
darwinii
being in the region
310-330 mm
;
Bump & Bump, 1969
). Furthermore one of the specimens labelled as
darwinii
(MHNG 1720.053) was referred to as
maculosa
in field notes made by its collectors.
FIG. 1
Nothura maculosa
specimens, previously labeled as
Nothura darwinii
: MHNG 1720
.054 (above), MHNG 1720.053 (below).
FIG. 2 Details of the primaries for MHNG 1720.054 (above) and MHNG 1720.053 (below). The barring present on both webs of the underside of the primaries is characteristic of
Nothura maculosa
.
Nothura darwinii
was included without comment in the Paraguayan avifauna by
Contreras
et al.
(1990)
presumably on the basis of these specimens, and later listed by
Hayes (1995)
as a species for which “no details have been published”.
Amarilla & Barreto (1999)
list an undocumented sight record by B. Young from near Cerro León,
Departamento Alto Paraguay
in 1998 but this seems almost certain to be in error, that area being largely forested, subhumid as opposed to the arid habitats this species occupies in the rest of its range and regularly birded without any prior or additional records.
Nothura darwinii
occurs in
Peru
,
Bolivia
and
Argentina
, the latter two sharing land borders with
Paraguay
(
Cabot, 1992
;
Schulenberg
et al.
, 2007
). In
Argentina
N. darwinii
is distributed on the eastern slope of the Andes from Provincias
Jujuy
and
Salta
south through eastern
La Pampa
and southwestern
Buenos Aires
to
Rio Negro
and northern
Chubut
(
Bump & Bump, 1969
;
Cabot, 1992
;
Davies, 2002
). In
Bolivia
its distribution again is associated largely with uplands and foothills in
La Paz
,
Cochabamba
,
Santa Cruz
,
Chuquisaca
,
Tarija
and
Oruro
Departaments, where it occurs locally to
4300 m
(
Hennessy
et al
., 2003
). In fact the closest Paraguayan territory comes to the known distribution of
N. darwinii
is extreme southwestern Boquerón department, and adjacent areas of
Argentina
and
Bolivia
in this area are occupied only by
N. maculosa
. Its presence in
Paraguay
must therefore be considered unlikely.