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

BIRDS OF ARGENTINA, PARAGUAY, URUGUAY, AND CHILE 37
dull black and olive-buff, with a slight buffy tinge. A female from
Kilometer 80, west of Puerto Pinasco, Paraguay, is grayer throughout
than any of the others, while the markings on the liind neck
and on the underj^arts are greatly restricted.
Spotted tinamous are birds of sedentary habit that have been
divided into a number of subspecies, even under the more or less
cursory examination that has been granted them by ornithologists
up to the present time. When series of specimens are available from
their entire range it will be found that a number of geographic races
have been overlooked, as it is probable that every extensive river
system may have a distinct form ranging through the plains of its
drainage basin. In the material at hand in the United States
National Museum three types of coloration are readily distinguished
among the spotted tinamous; Nothura m. maculosa, N. m. nigroguttata,
and N. m. savannai^m (probably N . m. minor, which I have
not seen) a group of subspecies characterized by more or less intense
buffy coloration and bold markings of the dorsal surface, ranging
from the well-watered pampas north to the Chaco and through
eastern Paraguay, Uruguay, and southern Brazil; Nothura m.
boUviana, N. m. peruviana, and N. m. agassizi of grayish color,
strongly marked above and streaked on the breast below, covering
eastern Peru, Bolivia, and the Chaco in Bolivia, Paraguay, and
Argentina ;^^ and Nothura d. daricini, N. d. tnendosensis, and N. d.
salvadorii, of grayish cast, with fine, vermiculated lining above and
diffuse markings below, from Patagonia, and the arid regions of
western Argentina, north into Salta. Nothura maculosa and N.
darioini are at present recognized as distinct species, while the
group characterized by holiviana (including the forms given above)
would also seem distinct, specially from N. maculosa in the characters
that have been enumerated. It is significant that a form
identical with or close to holivia/na was taken at Las Palmas on the
west bank of the Kio Paraguay, while a specimen in the United
States National Museum, from Corrientes a few miles below on the
eastern shore, just below the confluence of the Parana and Paraguay,
has the buffy coloration and bold markings of the true maculosa
group. The relationships of these birds are points to be settled
only when additional series are available.,
Nothura m. hoUvia^ia does not seem to have been recorded pre-
viously from Argentina.
One who has garnered from desultory reading on South American
natural history that the spotted tinamou is a bird of weak, uncertain
^ Tinamus ioraquira Spix (Av. spec. nov. Brazillam, vol. 2, 1825, p. 63, pi. 79) if
correctly delineated in the original plate should be placed in the genus Nothoprocta,
a group that differs from Nothura in having the posterior face of the tarsus covered
with small reticulate, hexagonal scales instead of with two rows of large scutes, the
outer of which is much broader and more distinct than the inner.
54207—26 i