Muscicapa tessacourbe Scopoli and M. luzoniensis Gmelin were both based upon Sonnerat’s plate. The species was unrecognized until Platen collected a male in Mindanao. Blasius described this specimen under the name Micropus nehrkorni, suggesting the probability that it was the same as Muscicapa luzoniensis. Sonnerat’s figure does not look much like a Penthornis.
Family SITTIDÆ.
Bill slender and pointed, about as long as head; neither notched nor toothed; culmen but very slightly curved; nostrils oval, nearly hidden by the antrorse frontal plumes; shafts of the latter hair-like and extending beyond the nostrils; rictal bristles very small; wing long, pointed and somewhat curved; first primary equal to about one-third of second; fourth and fifth nearly equal and longest; second between fifth and sixth in length; tail square, very short, scarcely more than one-half the wing; tarsus distinctly scutellate, equal to culmen from base; three anterior toes with their basal joints united; outer toe much longer than inner toe; hind toe with claw much longer than tarsus and nearly equal to middle toe with claw.
Genus CALLISITTA Bonaparte, 1850.
Upper parts of body blue, forehead black; under parts, buff or cinnamon, more or less washed with lilac.
Species.
- a1. Lores entirely black; mantle uniform blue like the back. palawana (p. [609])
- a2. Lores not entirely black, the
lower part white or buff; mantle somewhat lighter than the rest of the
back.
- b1. Breast and abdomen lighter, with little or no lilac wash.
- b2. Breast and abdomen darker, and heavily washed with lilac. lilacea (p. [611])
599. CALLISITTA PALAWANA (Hartert).
PALAWAN NUTHATCH.
- Sitta frontalis Gadow, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. (1883), 8, 358 (part).
- Dendrophila frontalis Whitehead, Ibis (1893), 53; Sharpe, Hand-List (1903), 4, 351 (part).
- Sitta frontalis palawana Hartert, Bull. Brit. Orn. Club (1905), 16, 11.
- Callisitta frontalis McGregor and Worcester, Hand-List (1906), 94.