CABANIS’S WEAVER.
- Oxycerca jagori (not Munia jagori Martens) Cabanis, Jour. für Orn. (1872), 317.
- Munia cabanisi Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. (1890), 13, 353 (new name); Whitehead, Ibis (1899), 242; McGregor and Worcester, Hand-List (1906), 105.
Luzon (Meyer, Heriot, Everett, Steere Exp., Bourns & Worcester, Whitehead, McGregor, Bartsch); Mindoro (Porter); Panay (Bourns & Worcester).
Adult (sexes alike).—Upper parts, including secondary-coverts and tertials, dark hair-brown with whitish shaft-lines; tail-coverts and rectrices light yellowish green; lores dusky; face and ear-coverts brown with light shaft-lines; chin and middle of throat vandyke-brown with lighter shaft-lines; feathers on the remaining under parts white with white shafts and white edges, each feather with a broad, median, brown mark and a wide brown band around the feather, next to the white edge, producing a peculiar and characteristic pattern. Iris light brown; bill horn-blue, the upper mandible darker especially toward the tip; legs and nails horn-blue. A male from Benguet Province, Luzon, measures: Length, 108; wing, 48; tail, 39; culmen from base, 10.5; tarsus, 13. A female, wing, 48; tail, 36; culmen from base, 11; tarsus, 13.
Young.—Upper parts broccoli-brown, darker on crown; under parts cream-buff, nearly white on middle of abdomen and on crissum.
Cabanis’s weaver is sometimes found in small flocks, but it is much rarer than either Munia jagori or Uroloncha everetti.
“A large flock of Cabanis’s weavers was seen in an open field in Panay, but this species was not again found by us. A female measures: Wing, 50; tail, 37.5; culmen, 11; tarsus, 13; middle toe with claw, 17.” (Bourns and Worcester MS.)
Genus UROLONCHA Cabanis, 1851.
The genus Uroloncha as represented in the Philippines differs very little from Munia; in the two species of Uroloncha found here the plumage is all, or nearly all, chocolate-brown, the tail is wedge-shaped, and the central pair of rectrices, although pointed, are less acute than in Munia.