In spite of the evident differences in the description, the Jamaican Ara has always been united with the Cuban A. tricolor, even as lately as October, 1905, by Mr. Austin H. Clark (Auk, 1905, p. 348), though he queries it in a footnote. The specimen described by Dr. Robinson, here quoted by Gosse, was shot about 1765, by Mr. Odell, in the mountains of Hanover parish, about ten miles east of Lucea.
Habitat: Jamaica.
The specimen described no longer exists, and there are none in any collection known.
There was a third member of the tricolor group of Macaws found on the large island of Haiti, which Mr. Clark has also united under A. tricolor, but I believe it must have been different, just as the Jamaica bird.
ARA ERYTHROCEPHALA ROTHSCH.
(Plate [12].)
Ara militaris Gosse, Birds of Jamaica, p. 261 (1847).
Ara erythrocephala Rothsch., Bull. B.O.C., XVI, p. 14 (1905); Proc. IV Orn. Congr., p. 201 (1907).
Gosse says the description given to him in a letter, just received from Mr. Hill, was as follows:—"Head red; neck, shoulders, and underparts of a light and lively green; the greater wing coverts and quills, blue; and the tail scarlet and blue on the upper surface, with the under plumage, both of wings and tail, a mass of intense orange yellow."
"The specimen here described was procured in the mountains of Trelawny and St. Anne's by Mr. White, proprietor of the Oxford estate." No specimen now known.