In the 1960s, I remember local birdmen puzzling over a Thornbill of the
drier inland of S Qld (now the race /albiventris /of Inland Thornbill).
It was generaslly thought to be an inland race of Brown. It was fairly
common about Chinchilla and beyond where we knew it well. The
taxonomists of the time, with some disagreement, were trying to decide
whether it was a distinct species or not. It became the Red-tailed
Thornbill and later the Broad-tailed Thornbill, and still later the
Inland Thornbill.
G.M. Storr in his list of Queensland Birds (1973) listed it as
Red-tailed Thornbill /(Acanthiza pusilla apicalis)./ Later in his
Revised List of Queensland Birds (1984), he listed it as Broad-tailed
Thornbill /(Acanthiza (pusilla) apicalis)./ It would have been some time
later, after it was accepted as the Inland Thornbill that /albiventris/
was recognised as a distinct race.
These days, when you look at the race /cinerascens/ from central
Queensland in the field, you do wonder if some sorting out/revision
needs to be done.
Lloyd Nielsen
Mt Molloy Nth Qld
--------------------------------------------
Birding-Aus is now on the Web at
www.birding-aus.org
--------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message 'unsubscribe
birding-aus' (no quotes, no Subject line)
to
|
