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SSUES 7

EUPSYCHORTYX SONNINIIL.

Sonnini’s Partridge.
S

Spreciric CHARACTER.

Eups. crista recurvata ; hac sic et plumis auricularibus cervinis ; pectore vinaceo vel rubescenti-

cinereo, fusco minute adsperso.

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Male.

sides of the neck rusty red; sides of the neck strongly marked with black and white ;

Face buffy white ; crest brownish buff; throat and stripe over the eye and down the

 

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mantle finely freckled with reddish brown, buff and black; upper surface generally
blotched and freckled with chestnut-black and grey, the feathers, especially the inner edge
of the tertiaries, margined with buff; tail brownish grey, minutely freckled and barred
with zigzag lines of buff and blackish brown; primaries light brown ; chest vinaceous or
reddish grey, very minutely freckled with brown; the remainder of the under surface,
flanks and under tail-coverts chestnut, each feather with six large spots of white, three
on the margin of either web separated by black ; bill black; irides dark brown; feet
greyish white.

Female.

erey, tinged with buff, each feather slightly margined with brown ; feathers of the chest
grey, 8 g g 5

Crown of the head, ear-coverts and crest brown; throat and stripe over the eye deep

 

and flanks buff, the former crossed in the middle with a strongly defined arrow-head-
shaped mark of black, the latter crossed by three somewhat triangular-shaped marks of the
same colour, intermingled with buff; flank markings not so defined as in the male; upper
surrace as in that sex, but the ground colour paler and the black patches larger and of a
deeper hue.

Total leneth, 8 inches: bill, 2; wing, 44; tazl, 2%; tarse, 14; middle toe and nail, 1+.
Sits ’ ) Ss ? ?

Coturnia fronte sordida, Rozier, Journ. de Phys. 1772, tom. i. part 1. p. 217. Die

Perdix Sonninii, Temm. Pig. et Gall., pp. 451 Nie lle tele Cole ea

La Caille de Cayenne, Sonn. Edit. Buff. Ois., tom. vii. p. 133.

Sonnini’s Quail, Lath. Gen. Hist., vol. vii. p. 328.

Ortyx Sonnini, Steph. Cont. of Shaw’s Gen. Zool., vol. xi. p. 383.—Jard. and Selb. Ill. Orn.,
vol. i. Gen. Ortyw—Less. Traité d@Orn., p. 508.—Ib. Ill. de Zool., texte de pl. 52.—
Gray and Mitch. Gen. of Birds, vol. ii. p. 514, Ortya, sp. 8.

Coturnix Sonninii, Vieill. 2nde Edit. du Nouv. Dict. d’Hist. Nat., tom. xxv. p. 248.—Ib. Ency.
Méth. Orn. part 1. p. 369.

 

Tus species appears to have been described and figured as long ago as 1772, by the Abbe Rozier in the
«‘ Journal de Physique,” but to have escaped the notice of ornithologists generally, until M. Temminck
characterized it in his “ Pigeons et Gallinacées” under the name of Perdix Sonninii, the appellation assigned

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to it by the Abbé not being retainable according to the rules of modern nomenclature. It is of the same

size as Eupsychortyx cristatus, but is distinguished from that species by the absence of spots on the chest,
which part is of a uniform vinaceous or reddish grey.
Habitat. Guiana, Caraccas, and the southern provinces of Mexico, from all of which countries I have seen

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specimens. M. Natterer states that it is also to be found “in the bushes of the prairies on the banks of

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the Rio Branco in Brazil.”

The figures represent the two sexes of the size of life.

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