The status of Indian Cuckoo in the Philippines needs clarification. It's currently treated as a winter visitor (micropterus) but that is certainly incorrect as birds are present year-round, and have a very distinct three note song).
The common names Sumatran Frogmouth and Bornean Frogmouth are already in widespread use following the split of Short-tailed Frogmouth several years ago.
It is treated in the Lynx guide as resident in Mindoro, the East Visayas and Mindanao in the Philippines. But there are no known morphological differences needed to split it. There are also no breeding records, but then cuckoo host species in the country in general remain very poorly documented.
pygmaeus was described by Alviola from Busuanga in the Calamianes/Calamian islands, so I think that would be the Calamian Frogmouth. However, I don't know of any authorities that recognise this taxon. If anyone has any information to suggest it is valid I would be interested to hear.
Are morphological differences required with cuckoos? Surely vocal differences are far more significant? Even across it's huge range, including the resident populations in the Sundas, the song is recognisably "one more bottle".
This might also be a suggestion of a potential new form not having a common name that I could find, so I tried to pick one that I thought worked best. I looked up this stuff a month ago, so my memory is rusty on this is that sort of suggestion. I can look later
Hello, very interesting what would be the basis of this Split ?
Birds of the worlds doesn't recognize it either, despite referencing the subspecies in the text. I am still not sure why fuscobrunneus isn't recognized...certainly the morphological differences seem to be sufficient. I know there are concerns about birds in Zaire having darker rumps, but at this point there isn't any evidence to say they are the same thing as the Angolan birds, so it seems a rather arbitrary decision.
The Clements spreadsheet says fuscobrunneus is considered part of the brown-rumped morph
I presume this depends on 'Horus Swift: identification, plumage variation and distribution' Justin J F J Jansen & Gerald Driessens Dutch Birding 2023
A copy of which is here.
We already asking for years to do genetics of both 'toulsoni' and 'fuscobrunneus' but so far now-one picked up this (both Gerald and I can't). We worked our way through museums collections in the past years, and as indicated in our article we found some swifts that are identified incorrectly. And still working on swifts in museum collections, so more and more will be corrected in the next years......
