Stray Feathers - A Journal of Ornithology for India and its Dependencies August 1878

We are asked to value collections ; to undertake their transmission to and sale in Europe ; to provide a good typical collection of the birds of India as the writer is thinking of going in for ornithology ; to decide bets as to the name of a bird of which a few feathers or a sketch giving circumference round the chest(!) is sent and so on. [...] The striations of the head and back are less defined than in the midwinter plumage ; the pale portions being more rufescent and darker coloured and the lower surface is much tinged as a rule with dull yellow though sometimes as in the specimen described as parunistriata this is wanting. [...] F. V. 59 ) is the type of which the prevailing tint of the upper surface is rufescent and the other of which S. atroglaris (Moore P. Z. S. 1854 77) is the type in which the prevailing tint of the upper surface is olivaceous more or less dusky on the head in the breeding plumage. [...] In this group the most conspicuous differences between the winter and summer plumages seem to be that in the winter plumage there is a long conspicuous supercilium and the throat and breast are white or creamy or bully the breast being often feebly marked with very narrow irregular continually almost obsolete black strim while in the breeding plumage there is no supercilium and the throat a [...] This too has an intermediate stage in which the breast feathers show very narrow black lateRal margins in which the red of the head is somewhat duller and in which there is a dark spot in front of ;the eye."REMARKS ON THE GENUS SUYA 5 Some specimens in these stages are almost undistingnisbable on the lower surface from superciliaris but the sides and flanks are never quite the clear rufous 4