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Wiki commons: Terpsiphone in a Tokyo museum (1 Viewer)

foresttwitcher said:
Google Translate struggles a bit through the camera with the smaller text but the characters for India seemed to come up.
Click to expand...
Wow! Didn't know it could do text in photos! Trouble is, is that just part of a general comment on where the species is from, or where that individual specimen is from??
 
Sorry, the text is too blurred for it to read the characters effectively. I could post on Kantori Facebook group and ask for a translation if you want.
 
foresttwitcher said:
Google Translate struggles a bit through the camera with the smaller text but the characters for India seemed to come up.
Click to expand...

The bottom line gives the range. The part to the right of the colon says "India - Southeast Asia - China." Google translate gives the words to the left of the colon as "zoning", which is likely a bad translation of area or range.
 
I wish I had a way to type the katakana in the other lines. My pronunciation of those doesn't make any sense to me, so I expect it isn't English.

Edit: Found something.

The line above the latin name is the Japanese name of the species as defined by Avibase. The line below the latin name loosely translates to:

Sparrow (something) Magpie Flycatcher (something).
 
Last edited:
Jeff hopkins said:
I wish I had a way to type the katakana in the other lines. My pronunciation of those doesn't make any sense to me, so I expect it isn't English.

Edit: Found something.

The line above the latin name is the Japanese name of the species as defined by Avibase. The line below the latin name loosely translates to:

Sparrow (something) Magpie Flycatcher (something).
Click to expand...

The 'sparrow something' is 'suzume-moku' which is Japanese for 'Passeriformes', and the 'magpie flycatcher' is 'kasasagi-bitaki-ka' which is Japanese for 'Monarchidae'.

The species name is 'kawari-sanko-cho' (or kawari-sankou-chou, if you prefer) which means 'different Paradise Flycatcher', Tersiphone paradisi, and is apparently 'Asian Paradise Flycatcher' (Mark Brazil, Birds of East Asia, doesn't split incei and affinis).

The distribution given in the label is 'India, south-east Asia, China'. No location is given for where this individual was taken.

Nutcracker: hope this helps. I spent a couple of hours this morning trying to find Lidth's Jay on the Google Street Maps for Amami Island, but failing.
 
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MacNara said:
The 'sparrow something' is 'suzume-moku' which is Japanese for Passeriformes, and the 'magpie flycatcher' is 'kasasagi-bitaki-ka' which is Japanese for 'Monarchidae'.

The species name is 'kawari-sanko-cho' (or kawari-sankou-chou, if you prefer) which means 'different Paradise Flycatcher, Tersiphone paradisi, and is apparently 'Asian Paradise Flycatcher' (Mark Brazil, Birds of East Asia, doesn't split incei and affinis).

The distribution given in the label is 'India, south-east Asia, China'. No location is given for where this individual was taken.

Nutcracker: hope this helps. I spent a couple of hours this morning trying to find Lidth's Jay on the Google Street Maps for Amami Island, but failing.
Click to expand...

The specimen looks like either affinis or incei, white morphs are AFAIK inseparable, atrocaudata lacks a white morph and paradisi would have much more elegonated crest feathers.

Grahame
 
Grahame Walbridge said:
The specimen looks like either affinis or incei, white morphs are AFAIK inseparable, atrocaudata lacks a white morph and paradisi would have much more elegonated crest feathers.

Grahame
Click to expand...

Hi Grahame: just for information, only one of my Japanese-language books has anything other than T. atrocaudata atrocaudata, and this other (published a couple of years ago) is 'paradisi' (but with a short crest including a photo of a white morph just like Nutcracker's bird) which it says has been seen on Yonaguni which is a small island very near to Taiwan).

Incidentally, there is nothing specifically in the original photo to say that this bird was captured in Japan, though one kind of assumes it must have been. But it looks pretty old, and it's worth remembering that for some time until 1945 'Japan' was quite a lot larger than it currently is.

I don't live in or anywhere near Tokyo, so I can't just pop in and ask, but I did look at the website of this museum, and I couldn't find any gallery.

Just as a matter of interest, Nutcracker, is there any special reason why you are interested in this particular specimen?
 
MacNara said:
Hi Grahame: just for information, only one of my Japanese-language books has anything other than T. atrocaudata atrocaudata, and this other (published a couple of years ago) is 'paradisi' (but with a short crest including a photo of a white morph just like Nutcracker's bird) which it says has been seen on Yonaguni which is a small island very near to Taiwan).
Click to expand...

I don't know what taxonomy OSJ follows but 3 of the major taxonomic authorities, namely IOC, Clements, and HBW Alive, have adopted the same new arrangement as follows, with some minor differences in choice of English name (HBW).

Japanese Paradise Flycatcher Terpsiphone atrocaudata
Amur/Chinese Paradise Flycatcher T. incei
Blyth's/Oriental Paradise Flycatcher T. affinis
Indian Paradise Flycatcher T. paradisi

Brazil's latest book affords incei specific status and cites it as a vagrant to Nansei Shoto. Suggest the Yonaguni bird is also incei as its a white morph. It would be good to know when/where the OP was collected.

Grahame
 
Last edited:
Jeff hopkins said:
I wish I had a way to type the katakana in the other lines. My pronunciation of those doesn't make any sense to me, so I expect it isn't English.

Edit: Found something.

The line above the latin name is the Japanese name of the species as defined by Avibase. The line below the latin name loosely translates to:

Sparrow (something) Magpie Flycatcher (something).
Click to expand...

MacNara said:
The 'sparrow something' is 'suzume-moku' which is Japanese for 'Passeriformes', and the 'magpie flycatcher' is 'kasasagi-bitaki-ka' which is Japanese for 'Monarchidae'.

The species name is 'kawari-sanko-cho' (or kawari-sankou-chou, if you prefer) which means 'different Paradise Flycatcher', Tersiphone paradisi, and is apparently 'Asian Paradise Flycatcher' (Mark Brazil, Birds of East Asia, doesn't split incei and affinis).

The distribution given in the label is 'India, south-east Asia, China'. No location is given for where this individual was taken.

Nutcracker: hope this helps. I spent a couple of hours this morning trying to find Lidth's Jay on the Google Street Maps for Amami Island, but failing.
Click to expand...
Excellent, thanks! Brazil's book is pre-2012 I think? That's when the split was made. And good luck on finding a Lidth's Jay (haven't even found an ordinary Jay on GSV yet!).
Grahame Walbridge said:
The specimen looks like either affinis or incei, white morphs are AFAIK inseparable, atrocaudata lacks a white morph and paradisi would have much more elegonated crest feathers.

Grahame
Click to expand...
Excellent, thanks!
MacNara said:
Hi Grahame: just for information, only one of my Japanese-language books has anything other than T. atrocaudata atrocaudata, and this other (published a couple of years ago) is 'paradisi' (but with a short crest including a photo of a white morph just like Nutcracker's bird) which it says has been seen on Yonaguni which is a small island very near to Taiwan).

Incidentally, there is nothing specifically in the original photo to say that this bird was captured in Japan, though one kind of assumes it must have been. But it looks pretty old, and it's worth remembering that for some time until 1945 'Japan' was quite a lot larger than it currently is.

I don't live in or anywhere near Tokyo, so I can't just pop in and ask, but I did look at the website of this museum, and I couldn't find any gallery.

Just as a matter of interest, Nutcracker, is there any special reason why you are interested in this particular specimen?
Click to expand...
Good reasoning - which brings a substantial part of incei range into Japan, but not affinis so much. So I'd think reasonable to say it'll be incei.


Doing it to sort out misidentified, or potentially misidentified, pics on wiki commons; there's plenty of them, but I didn't know how to identify Terpsiphone spp. in the absence of location data :t:
 
Nutcracker said:
Good reasoning - which brings a substantial part of incei range into Japan, but not affinis so much. So I'd think reasonable to say it'll be incei.


Doing it to sort out misidentified, or potentially misidentified, pics on wiki commons; there's plenty of them, but I didn't know how to identify Terpsiphone spp. in the absence of location data :t:
Click to expand...

Given that it's in a collection alongside a White-breasted Woodswallow (Artamus leucorynchus), I don't think it's safe to assume that the specimen was collected in Japan.
I think the white morph is relatively rare in incei, compared to affinis.
 
johnallcock said:
Given that it's in a collection alongside a White-breasted Woodswallow (Artamus leucorynchus), I don't think it's safe to assume that the specimen was collected in Japan.
I think the white morph is relatively rare in incei, compared to affinis.
Click to expand...
Fair point! So could easily be from e.g. Philippines or somewhere else in SE Asia conquered by Japan in the pre-WWII era.
 
MacNara said:
The 'sparrow something' is 'suzume-moku' which is Japanese for 'Passeriformes', and the 'magpie flycatcher' is 'kasasagi-bitaki-ka' which is Japanese for 'Monarchidae'.

The species name is 'kawari-sanko-cho' (or kawari-sankou-chou, if you prefer) which means 'different Paradise Flycatcher', Tersiphone paradisi, and is apparently 'Asian Paradise Flycatcher' (Mark Brazil, Birds of East Asia, doesn't split incei and affinis).

The distribution given in the label is 'India, south-east Asia, China'. No location is given for where this individual was taken.

Nutcracker: hope this helps. I spent a couple of hours this morning trying to find Lidth's Jay on the Google Street Maps for Amami Island, but failing.
Click to expand...

Thanks, MacNara. I didn't have a way to write the kanji into a translator, so I only got as far as the kana (other than the few kanji I recognized).
 
Nutcracker said:
Fair point! So could easily be from e.g. Philippines or somewhere else in SE Asia conquered by Japan in the pre-WWII era.
Click to expand...

Amur and Blyth's PF don't occur in the Philippines, so it's unlikely to be from there.
As far as I remember, white morph males are quite common in Borneo (Blyth's borneensis). According to HBW Alive, male Nusa Tenggara PF (T. floris) apparently occurs only in the white morph. Both areas were under Japanese occupation in the past.

I think it's likely this bird is from SE Asia, but I don't think it'll be possible to say exactly where, or which taxon it is.
 
If you open the link posted by Nutcracker, then at the bottom there is a link to Taxidermied birds in the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo,

If you follow this, you will see that the poster has posted 62 such birds. Most of them are Japanese birds, but not all - e.g. Andean Cock of the Rock is one of them.

Therefore, this bird could presumably have come from anywhere (i.e. there's no particular reason on the data we have to think it comes from Japan, modern or pre-war).

I looked at the photos hoping that one of them might have a background panel 'Birds of Southeast Asia' of something, which might help with location, but I couldn't find anything.

I also didn't have any luck finding anything on the Museum's website, either.
 
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