<M6?3 Vol. 71, pp. 161-162 December 31, 1958 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON TWO NEW BIRDS FROM EASTERN ASIA By H. G. Deignan* Peters (Check-list of Birds of the World, vol. 4, 1940, p. 252) records the Malaj^an house swift, Apus affinis subfurca-tus, as ''casual in the Philippines, Formosa and the Borodino Islands. " Hachisuka (Quarterly Journal of the Taiwan Museum, vol. 4, Nos. 1 & 2, June 1951, p. 76) emendates Peters 's statement, saying "A small number of this House-Swift [subfurcatus] is resident in Formosa, breeding probably in high mountains and descending to the low plains in winter." I have recently obtained from Dr. Kobert E. Kuntz, Head of the Parasitology Department, U. S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 2, based in Formosa, a series of 29 adult house swifts (many of them cap-tured on their nests) from the suburbs of Taipei. They prove to repre-sent on undescribed subspecies, which may be called Apus affinis kuntzi, subsp. nov. Type: U. S. National Museum No. 469354, unsexed adult, collected at Shih Lin (a northern suburb of Taipei), Taipei Hsien, Formosa, on 26 June 1958, by C. Cheng; original number PF 5007 d. Diagnosis: Nearest Apus affinis subfurcatus (Blyth) of Malaya, but easily separable by having the general coloration an almost matt black, and so far as it is glossed at all, glossed with greenish blue rather than steel blue; the throat patch and rump band ashy white, not snow white, and thus less sharply defined from the adjacent dark areas of the plumage. Range: Northern Formosa. (Reports of the occurrence of A. a. subfurcatus in the Borodino Islands, the northern Philippines, and on the coast of Fukicn should be reconsidered.) II. In course of study of the Timaliinae for a forthcoming volume of Peters 's Check-list of Birds of the World, I find it necessary to name a hitherto unreported population of the blue-winged siva from the low-lands of Szechwan. I shall call it *Published with permission of tho Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 33— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 71, 1958 Ifll I' I ON 'DEC 3 1 19bfc
BioStor
