Philepittidae

Philepitta schlegeli
Schlegel's Asiti
Schlegels Asitie (Dutch)

ZMA 80
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Near-Threatened A bird endemic to western Madagascar, common only in the moist forest of the north-west, much rarer and more local in drier limestone forest further south. Most of these western forests became highly degraded in recent years, mostly due to wood extraction, cattle farming, and mining, and the species is in decline. On a long term, it may be safe only in pinnacle karst massifs, where it occurs commonly and which are of difficult access to humans, but the area occupied by this habitat is small in extent.

Items in the ZMA - 2 birds:
ZMA 80 & 81 Adults, male & female, undated [before 1880], no locality [W Madagascar], old former mounts.

Remarks
No original labels are present. Like various other birds from Madagascar in our collection, they either derived from F.P.L. Pollen (who was with D.C. van Dam in Madagascar from mid-1863 to mid-1867; the birds may then be part of Schlegel's type series from 1867), or they arrived with later sendings of Van Dam (in Madagascar 1869-1873) or from J.P. Audebert (in Madagascar late 1875 to early 1879). Pollen donated 32 skins from Madagascar to the predecessor of the ZMA in 1867, but the names of the species then received were not written down in the entrance book.

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