Bombycillidae

Bombycivora japonica
Siebold, 1824: 13

Current name:
Bombycilla japonica

Japanese Waxwing
1 syntype

Syntype: ZMA 2461, 'male' [but 1st winter female according to plumage], 'Japan', undated; wing 109.5, tail 45, bill to skull c. 16.5, tarsus c. 16.3.

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Additional information
The types came from the provinces Tyko & Tsikuzen (now Kumamoto & Fukuoka prefectures, NW Kyushu), Japan (Siebold 1824). They were in the collection of Jan Cock Blomhoff, 'Opperhoofd' [chief] of the Dutch trade-post on Deshima I. in Nagasaki Bay (Kyushu, Japan), and taken between 1816 and 1823. Cock Blomhoff (1779-1853) was on Deshima in 1809-1823, interrupted by a stay in captivity in England during 1812-1815 because he refused to give up the trading post to the British Crown (Molhuysen & Block 1911). When Von Siebold arrived on Deshima in Aug 1923, he immediately recognized the birds as new and described them in a letter send from Nagasaki to Batavia, where the description (and those of some other animals) was published early in 1924 by the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Tjon Sie Fat & van Vliet 1990). No data about the number of types was given by Von Siebold, but Temminck (1828) examined 2 birds when the collection of Cock Blomhoff had arrived in the Netherlands in 1824 and these are considered as syntypes in Roselaar & Prins (2000). One of the syntypes was apparently a male, as the description provided by Von Siebold is of the male sex; the other bird was also labelled 'male' but is in fact a 1st winter female. This latter bird survived, but the whereabouts of the first bird are unknown. Temminck (1928) apparently hoped that the first bird would be given to the RMNH, as he states that it was there, but for his description of Bombycilla phoenicoptera (see below) he only used the female, so obviously the male was not in his possession. At present, no bird in the RMNH dates from before c. 1840. On the plate in Temminck (1828), the text reads "mâle" (as on the original stand of the ZMA bird), but the plumage of the bird depicted is that of a 1st winter female; in Temminck & Schlegel (1842), the sex of the bird is correctly stated to be female. The female was on show at Cock Blomhoff's home in Amsterdam from 1824 onwards, and was donated to the Museum of the Zoological Society 'Natura Artis Magistra' (the predecessor of the ZMA) in or shortly after 1844 (Maitland 1863), where it still is. The two syntypes are also the syntypes of Bombycilla phoenicoptera Temminck, 1828: though Von Siebold (1824) described the male and Temminck (1828) the female, both authors knew of the existence of the other specimen.

Bombycilla phoenicoptera Temminck, 1828: pl. 450.
Current name: Bombycilla japonica.

Syntype: ZMA 2461; the same bird as referred to above, which is the one depicted in the original description of Temminck (1928).
See the discussion under the previous taxon.

Measurements
As far as types in the ZMA are concerned, all measurements were taken by C.S. Roselaar, unless otherwise noted, using the methods as described in Svensson (1992) and comparable with the data published in the Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds. All are in mm, and are given to the nearest mm when taken with a ruler and to one-tenth of a mm when measured with calipers.

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