Bulletin - United States National Museum - si-pddr - Smithsonian ...

344 BULLETIN 133, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
that Hirundo cyanoleuca Vieillot will eventually be transferred to
the bird noAv Imown as P. patagonica^ while P. cyanoleuca auct. will
become P. minuta (Maximilian)-^*' The matter, hoAvever, is best left
in abeyance pending more extended collectino; in Corrientes and
Paraguay.
PYGOCHELIDON PATAGONICA PATAGONICA (d'Orbigny and Lafresnaye)
Hirundo patayonica cI'Okbigny and Lafresnaye, Mag. Zool.. 1837, cl. 2,
p. 69. (Patagonia.)
The present swallow is the most common species of the present
family in Argentina. Records, based on specimens, of the occurrence
of this bird are as follows: Kilometer 200, west of Puerto
Pinasco, Paraguay, September 24 (male taken) and 25, 1920 (the
most northern record for the species in the interior) ; Carhue,
Buenos Aires, December 15 to 18 (immature male, December 18) ;
Guamini, Buenos Aires, March 4 to 8, 1921 (four skins, adults and
immature of both sexes) ; General Roca, Rio Negro, November 27
to December 3 (adult female, November 27) ; Zapala, Neuquen.
December 8 (adult female) ; Potrerillos, Mendoza, March 17 to 21
(adult female, March 19).
The following records are assumed to represent this species, but
identification was not checked by the collection of skins; Puerto
Pinasco, Paraguay, September 3 ; Formosa, Formosa, August 24
Riacho Pilaga, Formosa, August 9 to 21; Las Palmas, Chaco, July
14 to 31 ; Dolores, Buenos Aires, October 21, Lavalle, Buenos Aires,
October 23 to November 13; Ingeniero White (near Bahia Blanca),
Buenos Aires, December 13; Tunuyan, Mendoza, March 22 to 29.
A northern subspecies of this bird from Peru, P. p. peruviana
Chapman, differs from the typical form in smaller size, and paler
under wing coverts. It is possible that P. fiavipes Chapman,''^
based on a single skin from Maraynioc, Peru, represents merely an
immature phase of cyanoleuca. An immature female, cyanoleuca^
from Matchu Picchu, Peru, shot June 25, 1915, (Cat. No. 273,300
U. S. N. M.,) has the feet and tarsi decidedly yellowish brown.
Though it has been stated that the light external margin of the
outer rectrices is found in patagonica alone, I have noted it in
slight degree in skins of cyanoleuca from Costa Rica, Colombia,
Peru, and Uruguay.
During winter, in the Chaco, these little swallows were found in
flocks about lagoons where they often rested on tufts of grass in
the water, or after hawking about for insects in the dusk sought
roosts among the rushes. One shot, September 24, was fat and in
^Hirundo minuta Maximilian, Reis. Brasilien, vol. 2, p. 336. (Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil.)
s^Am. Mus., Nov., no. 30, Feb. 28, 1922, p. 8.
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