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oF NaTuRAL History

Number 51 June 27, 1961 New Haven, Conn.

—

THE CRESTED LIZARD HAWK (4AVICEDA JERDONI)
IN THE PHILIPPINES

KENNETH C. Parkes

CarNeGir Museum, PirrspurGH, PENNSYLVANIA

The genus Aviceda contains about five species of small hawks
distributed through the Old World tropics. Two forms of this
genus have been described from the Philippines: Hyptiopus
magnirostris Kaup, 1847, and Baza leucopias Sharpe, 1888.
The latter was based on a single specimen from the island of
Palawan. The application of these two names to the Crested
Lizard Hawks of the Philippines has varied. Modern authors
agree that the Philippine birds belong to the Indo-Malaysian
species Aviceda jerdoni. Peters (1931: 196) used the name
A. j. magnirostris for the populations of Luzon and Mindanao,
and attributed those of the islands of Romblon, Samar, and
Palawan to a subspecies to which he attached Sharpe’s name
leucopias. He was followed in this treatment by Hachisuka
(1934: 34-35) and Swann and Wetmore (1936: 294-295) ; the
former author adopted the emendation to “lewcopais” pub-
lished by Whitehead (1890: 43) at Sharpe’s request.

The most recent manual on Philippine birds (Delacour and
Mayr, 1946: 40) abandons the concept of two subspecies,
using the name magnirostris for the birds of all five islands
(Palawan, Luzon, Romblon, Samar, and Mindanao) from
which Aviceda has supposedly been recorded. The description

2 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 51

of the “immature” 4. j. magnirostris given by Delacour and
Mayr, however, is based on the unique type of lewcopias, which
was described as a “young female” by Sharpe.

I have examined the type of lewcopias, now in the American
Museum of Natural History (Rothschild Collection), which
remains to this writing the only specimen of Aviceda known
from Palawan. It is my belief that this bird (figured in color
by Whitehead, 1890: pl. 2) is albinistic, and that there is no
definite evidence that the lewcopias coloration represents a
normal “immature” plumage of magnirostris as described by
Delacour and Mayr. Truly “immature” specimens of Aviceda
of any species are rare in collections, and examination of the
entire series of this genus in the American Museum suggests
that this is because such plumages are held very briefly, unlike
the situation in many other Accipitridae. Two juvenile speci-
mens of 4A. jerdoni ceylonensis in the American Museum are
similar to definitively plumaged adults, but have the feathers
of back, crown, wing coverts, etc., edged with white, and the
upper breast streaked longitudinally. It seems very unlikely
that 4. j. magnirostris, of which the adults rather closely
resemble other subspecies, would have a juvenal plumage as
radically different as that represented by leucopias. As men-
tioned above, other Aviceda hold the juvenal plumage only
briefly; the type of lewcopias is, in part, badly worn and
bleached to an extent that juvenile Aviceda would not normally
have time to attain before molting. It thus seems probable that
the type of lewcopias represents a ‘‘dilute” or albinistic adult
female. The fate of the name depends on whether a case can be
made for two subspecies of Aviceda jerdonit in the Philippines.

The presence of the small island of Romblon in the list of
Philippine localities from which Aviceda has been taken rests
on the record of Bourns and Worcester (1894: 33), who re-
ported “Baza leucopais Sharpe” from Romblon and Samar.
These authors had not seen the unique type of lewcopias, and
identified their specimens from descriptions only. Their single
Romblon specimen is now in the collection of Carnegie Museum
(no. 137904). It is not an Aviceda at all, but an immature
female Spilornis cheela, collected September 7, 1892, just seven
days before Bourns and Worcester collected an adult female

June 27, 1961 The Crested Lizard Hawk 3

(C.M. 137902) of the same species on Romblon. The yery sm: all
size of these two specimens (flattened wing 808, 305) mm) and
the pale color of the adult incidentally confirm Rand’s identi-
fication of his single Romblon specimen as Spilornis cheela
panayensis (Rand, 1951: 578). The island of Romblon may
thus be removed from the known range of Aviceda jerdoni in
the Philippines.

For many years the status of Aviceda on the island of
Samar was precisely like the Romblon status described above,
resting on a single Bourns and Worcester specimen. This bird
was collected at Catbalogan, Samar, on August 12, 1892, and
is now in the collection of the Minnesota Museum of Natural
History, University of Minnesota (no. 11416). It, too, is an
immature Spilornis cheela (male, wing 312 mm). There is,
however, a bona fide record of Aviceda jerdoni from Samar ;
an adult male was collected by D. S. Rabor on Mt. Capoto-an,
May 9, 1957. The statement of Rand and Rabor (1960: 374)
that A. j. magnirostris had been “collected previously [on
Samar] by Bourns and Worcester” is thus erroneous, and
theirs is the first specimen from that island.

Leaving out of consideration the single problematical Pala-
wan specimen (the type of lewcopias), we are left with three
islands from which Aviceda jerdoni is alleged to have been
recorded: Luzon, Samar, and Mindanao. The name Hyptiopus
magnirostris Kaup was based on Baza magnirostris Gray, (List
Bds. Brit. Mus., 1844: 19), a nomen nudum, which in turn
was based on a single specimen received by the British Museum
in 1842 among some 175 fee ie specimens collected by
Hugh Cuming. Mr. R. W. Sims has kindly examined this type
specimen for me, and writes as follows (letter of July 16,
1960) : “Cuming never tied collectors’ labels on his specimens,
hence the only label is that secured in the time of G. R. Gray.
The information there reads: ‘Baza magnirostris, locality Phil-
ippines, ex. coll. Cuming.’ ”” At some later date (apparently),
the additional locality “Island of Manilla, South” was entered
against this specimen in the British Museum Register (Sharpe,
1898: 555). The source of this additional locality information
is problematical. It is highly unlikely that it was supplied by
Cuming, the collector; Mr. S. P. Dance of the Mollusca Sec-

4 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 51

tion of the British Museum, who is working on the life and
collections of Hugh Cuming, informs me that Cuming never,
to his knowledge, employed the expression “Island of Manilla,”
whereas “Island of Luzon” was frequently used by Cuming.
Mr. Sims, of the Bird Room, writes, “I gather from Mr. Dance
that in his later years Cuming employed a secretary to do all
his writing for him so it is possible that somewhere either on
the part of the secretary or perhaps on the part of G. R. Gray
there was an error in transcription and that the type of magni-
rostris was collected at some other locality.” Mr. Dance (letter
of August 29, 1960) says that he ‘tshould be inclined to treat
any label on a Cuming specimen with circumspection . . .”

Sharpe (1893: 556) pointed out that nobody since Cuming’s
time had recorded Aviceda from Luzon, and this statement
is equally true 68 years after Sharpe’s words were printed.
Although new species are still being discovered on Luzon, it
seems highly unlikely that a bird the size of an Aviceda would
escape detection on this, the most heavily populated Philippine
Island, particularly since most Luzon birds collected in Cum-
ing’s time, some 130 years ago, came from the vicinity of
Manila. In view of the great uncertainty attached to the va-
lidity of the locality “Island of Manilla, South,” I would
suggest that the type locality of Hyptiopus magnirostris Kaup
be designated as Davao, Mindanao, a source of some early
Philippine collections and a locality at which the species is
definitely known to occur. A precedent for such an action with
respect to a Cuming specimen was set by Rand and Rabor
(1960: 429).

An additional published record of Aviceda jerdoni “‘leuco-
pais” must be mentioned here. Hachisuka (1941: 72) lists five
“light creamy birds” from Mr. Hirazawa’s collection as “‘leu-
copais.” As these were collected in Mindanao, where magni-
rostris is also known to occur, Hachisuka stated that the two
forms must be separate species unless further investigation
should prove them to be age or individual variants within a
species. One would suspect that this might serve to confirm
Delacour and Mayr’s identification of the lewcopias type as
the “immature” plumage of magnirostris. This is not the case,
however. One of the Hirazawa specimens was obtained by

June 27, 1961 The Crested Lizard Hawk 5

Hachisuka, and is now in the personal collection of S. Dillon
Ripley at the Peabody Museum, Yale University, where I have
examined it. This specimen (Hachisuka 3751, SDR 337) was
collected near Davao, Mindanao, sometime in 1927-1928. It is
neither Aviceda nor Spilornis, but a pale, very worn example
of Pernis celebensis steerei! The latter species of Honey Buz-
zard, incidentally, is highly variable in color, as is its congener
P. ptilorhynchus, as amply illustrated by the series in the
Peabody Museum collection: one would not suspect this vari-
ability from the description given by Delacour and Mayr
(1946: 42).

An additional specimen in the Hachisuka collection (Hachi-
suka 3752, SDR 338) was collected at Bitogan, Sigaboy,
Mindanao in 1930 (no date given). It was first identified as
Spizaétus limnaecetus, then reidentified as Aviceda jerdoni mag-
nirostris. It is, in fact, another specimen of Pernis celebensis
steeret. 1 do not know that Hachisuka ever specifically referred
to this specimen in print. As for the rest of the Hirazawa
series of “leucopais,’ I have been unable to learn of their
present whereabouts, if, indeed, the Hirazawa collection sur-
vived World War II. One can but assume that all five speci-
mens were of one species, in which case they were not Aviceda
but Pernis, as illustrated by the example seen.

Rand and Rabor (1960: 374) stated that their one Samar
specimen of Aviceda jerdoni magnirostris, a male, had a defi-
nitely shorter wing than two females and an unsexed specimen
from Mindanao. There probably is no geographic significance
in this difference. The Samar male has a flattened wing of
294 mm; measurements of a Mindanao series run as follows:
male 299, 311; female 298, 299, 308, 314, 321, 324. It
would appear that males average slightly smaller than females.
There is a spread of 26 mm between the smallest and largest
females measured, and only 12 mm between the two Mindanao
males. The Samar male would undoubtedly fall within the range
of variation in size of a larger series of Mindanao males.

The unsexed specimen from Mindanao mentioned by Rand
and Rabor is readily identified as a female on the basis of
plumage color. Although this is not suggested in the descrip-
tion by Delacour and Mayr (1946: 40), Aviceda jerdoni is

6 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 51

markedly sexually dimorphic in color. The difference is well
described for A. j. jerdoni by Stuart Baker (1928: 174),
but the dimorphism of magnirostris does not appear to have
been correctly described. The descriptions of the “nearly adult
female” and “adult male” given by McGregor (1909: 236-237)
and Hachisuka (1984: 34) are copied directly from Sharpe
(1874: 356), with and without credit, respectively. But, as
Sharpe himself pointed out (1893: 555-556), the ‘nearly adult
female” proved to have been a victim of a labeling error, and
was not in fact from the Philippines at all. The figure in
Delacour and Mayr (1946: 41) may be a composite of the
two specimens in the American Museum of Natural History,
as it partakes of the characteristics of both sexes. In males
the upper breast is more or less clear gray; in females this
area is mixed with rufous. The broad brown bars of the pos-
terior underparts are a darker, less rufescent brown in males.
The cheeks of males are gray with black shaft-streaks: this
area in females is buffy or pale rufous with darker-brown shaft-
streaks. Females are much more rufescent dorsally; this is
most striking on the crown and nape, which have bright rufous
feathers with darker centers. In males the crown is virtually
black, with narrow, paler feather-edges, and the nape nearly
lacks rufescence. On the outer rectrix of males, the dark bars
of the outer web are approximately opposite those of the inner
web, whereas in females the dark bars are offset from one an-
other, sometimes to the degree that (as in C.N.H.M. 184011)
the dark bars of the outer web are opposite the light bars of
the inner web. Incidentally, the figure in Delacour and Mayr
(1946: 41) shows the outer rectrices with only a narrow pale
tipping, whereas there is actually a rather broad pale terminal
band (20-28 mm).

The four Mindanao females now before me are rather uni-
form in dorsal color, making allowances for relative wear and
museum age. Only two males are at hand, one of which is the
Samar bird reported by Rand and Rabor (1960: 374). This
specimen differs slightly in color from a single Mindanao male
in being of a darker, colder tone of brown dorsally, lacking
almost completely the rufescent tinge on the nape of the latter
bird. The Samar specimen also has dark-gray rather than

June 27, 1961 The Crested Lizard Hawk 7

dark-brown edgings to the black feathers in the center of the
crown. Further material must be compared before any geo-
graphical significance can be attached to these differences.
The Crested Lizard Hawk is a rare bird in the Philippines.
Dr. Rabor writes me (letter of September 17, 1960) that the
Samar male is the only specimen he has taken in 26 years of
collecting. I have attempted a census of Philippine specimens
of Aviceda jerdoni, and have managed to locate the following:

British Museum (Natural History)
6 ‘Philippines,” Cuming coll. (type of magnirostris).
? Davao, Mindanao, February, 1905.

American Museum of Natural History
2 Kalusian, Palawan, October 5, 1887 (type of leuco-
pias).
Davao, Mindanao, May 17, 1889.
2 Davao, Mindanao, September 8, 1903.

Chicago Natural History Museum
[ 2 ] Culamen, Caburan, Davao, Mindanao, January 25,
1947.
2? Mt. Busaw, Caburan, Davao, Mindanao, January 28,
1947.
2 Mati, Digos, Davao, Mindanao, February 9, 1947.
6 Mt. Capoto-an, Samar, May 9, 1957.

University Zoological Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark
2 Talacogan, Upper Agusan, Mindanao, March 8, 1952.
2 Pulangi River, Bukidnon, Mindanao, November 20,
1952.

National Museum of the Philippines, Manila
6 Limot, Mati, Davao, Mindanao, April 10, 1949.
[2 Bunauan, Agusan, Mindanao, December 17, 1909: Mc-

Gregor, 1910. This specimen was lost with the destruction of
the Museum in 1945. |

8 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 51

These thirteen specimens (one lost) are the only examples
of Aviceda to have been collected in the Philippines to my
present knowledge. I have examined the seven now in museums
in the United States.

Lint and Stott (1948: 42) published sight records of this
species from three localities in Zamboanga, western Mindanao,
all in October, 1945. In view of the rarity of Aviceda jerdoni,
however, the possibility must be considered that some similar
species was involved (several Philippine raptors have similar
patterns), particularly as a “bare tree within half a mile of the
center of the city of Zamboanga” seems a most unlikely situa-
tion for a species usually described as a shy resident of original
forests. The species has not been collected in Zamboanga.

It is obvious that the principal Philippine range of this
rare bird is central Mindanao: only two specimens are known
to have been collected elsewhere. It is just possible that a recog-
nizable subspecies may inhabit Samar, but the status of the
Palawan population cannot be determined from the single
specimen known, which appears to be a freak individual.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Specimens were borrowed through the kind cooperation of
Dr. A. L. Rand of the Chicago Natural History Museum,
Dr. Dean Amadon of the American Museum of Natural His-
tory, and Mr. Robert W. Dickerman of the University of
Minnesota. Mr. Dickerman and Dr. Dwain Warner were instru-
mental in arranging the exchange of a portion of the Bourns
and Worcester Philippine collection to the Carnegie Museum.
Specimens were examined at the Peabody Museum of Natural
History, Yale University, through the courtesy of Drs. S.
Dillon Ripley and Philip S. Humphrey. Data on specimens in
the British Museum (Natural History) were supplied by Mr.
R. W. Sims, and information about Cuming’s collecting local-
ities by Mr. S. P. Dance. Data on specimens in the National
Museum of the Philippines were sent by Mr. Telesforo Oane,
and on those in the University Zoological Museum, Copen-
hagen, by Mr. Arne Norrevang.

June 27, 1961 The Crested Lizard Hawk 9

SUMMARY

The Crested Lizard Hawk, Aviceda jerdoni, is known from
the Philippines by thirteen or more specimens of the endemic
subspecies 4. j. magnirostris. The type locality “Luzon” gen-
erally given for this subspecies is almost certainly erroneous,
and Davao, Mindanao is substituted. A second supposed race,
A. j. leucopias, is based on a single specimen from Palawan
which is probably an aberrant individual. Other records of
“leucopias” from Romblon, Samar, and Mindanao are based
on misidentified specimens. All but two specimens of known
origin of magnirostris are from Mindanao; these are the
type of “leucopias” from Palawan and one from Samar which
may represent a recognizable race. Sexual dimorphism in
magnirostris is described for the first time, and all known

specimens listed.

10 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No: 5

LITERATURE CITED

Baker, E. C. Stuart. 1928. Fauna of British India. Birds 5. Taylor &
Francis, London. 469 p.

Bourns, F. S. and D. C. Worcester. 1894. Preliminary notes on the birds
and mammals collected by the Menage scientific expedition to the
Philippine Islands. Occ. Pap. Minn. Acad. Nat. Sci. 1: 1-64

Delacour, J. and E. Mayr. 1946. Birds of the Philippines. Macmillan Co.,
New York. 309 p.

Hachisuka, M. 1934. The birds of the Philippine Islands 2 (4). Witherby,
London. 256 p.

Hachisuka, M. 1941. Further contributions to the ornithology of the
Philippines. Tori 11: 61-89.

Lint, Kk. C. and k. Stott, Jr. 1948. Notes on birds of the Philippines. Auk
65: 41-46.

McGregor, R. C. 1909. A manual of Philippine birds. Bureau of Science,
Manila. 769 p.

McGregor, R. C. 1910. Additional notes on birds from northern Mind-
anao, Philippine Islands. Phil. J. Sci. 5, see. D: 197.

Peters, J. L. 1931. Check-list of birds of the world 1. Harvard Univ. Press,
Cambridge. 345 p.

Rand, A. L. 1951. Birds of Negros Island. Fieldiana: Zool. 31: 571-596.

Rand, A. I.. and D. S. Rabor. 1960. Birds of the Philippine Islands:
Siquijor, Mount Malindang, Bohol, and Samar. Fieldiana: Zool. 35:
221-441.

Sharpe, R. B. 1874. Catalogue of the Accipitres, or diurnal birds of prey,
in the collection of the British Museum. British Museum, London. 480 p.

Sharpe, R. B. 1893. Bornean notes. Ibis [85]: 546-563.

Swann, H. kK. and A. Wetmore. 1936. A monograph of the birds of prey
2 (13): 257-352.

Whitehead, J. 1890. Notes on the birds of Palawan. Ibis [32]: 38-61.

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