Part II: The Laughing Thrushes (Garrulax species)

Abstract

The appearance of living specimens of Garrulax galbanus in Europe in 1988 rekindled ornithological interest in what had been a rather obscure, if enigmatic species. It was first described by the British naturalist H.H.Godwin-Austen in 1874, from specimens he collected in the remote Manipur Valley in northeastern India in 1873 (Long, et al, 1994). Subsequent specimens were collected in Manipur by GodwinAusten in the 1890s, and, a couple of other persons since then (Ibid, 1994). In nearby Nagaland, the great American ornithologist (and aviculturist) Dillon Ripley collected study skins in 1950.

Other collectors from the 1890s to the 1950s gradually established that this species also occured in the Chin Hills of Myanmar (Burma) (not far from Manipur), as well as the Indian states of Assam and Mizoram. In addition, there is a probable sight record from the republic of Bangladesh (Ibid, 1994). From these records, it appeared that G. galbanus's remote and little studied range by and large conforms to that of Blyth's Tragopan (Tragopan b. blythi), one of the last-discovered and least-known pheasants, and one of the rarest in captivity.

There was one glaring exception to this generalization. In 1919 two specimens were collected very far to the east from the above localities, in Wuyuan, in China's Jiangxi (formerly Shansi) Province. These were originally considered a new species, but in 1930, the great French ornithologist Jacques Berlioz not only lumped them under Garrulax galbanus, as the subspecies G. galbanus courtoisi, but called into question their Jiangxi collection locality. Long, et al (1994) states that Berlioz gave no reason for doing that. I believe one may gain some insight from Jean Delacour's fond account of office politics at the Department of Birds and Mammals at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, in pages 31-32 of his autobiography (Delacour, 1966). He relates: "The assistant curator, Auguste Menegaux, also seemed to belong to the mummy class, but he was much more rugged. Very bald, he always wore a small Greek cap and his high cheekbones, short nose and shaggy moustache immediately suggested a jack-in-thebox. Brusque and rough, with no great interest in his work, he had little patience with young zealots, and we were never very good friends. Trouessart [the head Curator] hated him, and I always suspected that the professor's pronounced friendship for me was partly caused by Menegaux's antagonism. I had marvellous fun in witnessing extraordinary scenes between these two curious men ... not very inspiring to young naturalists .. ., They somehow disorganised for a time the study of mammals and birds in Paris... Fortunately Jacques Berlioz replaced Menegaux soon after the [First World] war, and the old traditions of the museum were happily carried on again. French ornithology started anew and regained its importance."

In light of the above, given that the original description of Garrulax courtoisi was made by Auguste Menegaux in 1923 (Long, et al, 1994), it is scarcely surprising that Berlioz had doubts about the type locality of this Laughing Thrush, and relegated it to subspecies status. (Jean Delacour, who many readers of this magazine do not need to be reminded was one of the greatest ornithologists of all time, was great friends with Jacques Berlioz-He described the Quangtri subspecies of the Silver Pheasant as Lophura nycthemera berliozi in 1928).

As it turns out, Garrulax albanus courtoisi does come from Jiangxi Province after all, a fact established in 1994, three quarters of a century after Menegaux's specimens were collected. Funded by the Munich based

Zoological Society for the Conservation of Species and Populations (of which Roland Wirth is Chairman and Founder), an expedition led by the ornithologists He Fen-qi and Zhang yi-sun to Wuyuan turned up "a specimen in a local house" and "People who knew it albeit uncommonly" (Long, et al, 1994).

However the two specimens described by Menegaux, sent to him by Father Courtoise, Director of the Shanghai Museum (Berlioz, 1930), and maintained ever since at the Natural History Museum in Paris (France's much older equivalent to our Smithsonian Institution), remain the only ones in any collection. Thus, efforts to conserve this species in Jiangxi are all the more important.

In a September, 1996 communication to Christopher Brown, Curator of Birds at the Fort Worth Zoological Park, Roland Wirth discussed a survey in progress at Wuyuan, jointly funded by his Zoological Society for the Conservation of Species and Populations, Stiftung Avifauna Protecta (another German nonprofit organization), and the Oriental Bird Club: 'The project aims to survey a whole range of 'mini-protected areas' in the district to record and map the birds and rare plants... It is thought that these areas may contain the major remaining populations of courtoisi ... ". The field researchers are three staffmembers of the Wuyuan Forestry Office and Reserve Management Office, while the Project "Liason Person" and Project Supervisor is Dr. He Fen-qi of the Institute of Zoology of the Academica Sinica in Beijing (China's equivalent to the Smithsonian). Wirth expects to hear some news shortly.

Jacques Berlioz 0930), thinking it most unlikely that a bird known previously from India and Burma should otherwise occur far to the Northeast in Shansi, but considering the two Paris specimens had come from the Shanghai Museum, surmised that they might have originated somewhere in South-east China. As it happens, aside from Jiangxi, the only other known Chinese locality for Garro/ax galbanus is in Yunan-the province in the far South-west corner of China. There, in Simao, three specimens were collected in March 1956. Two of these are now at Wuhan University, in Central China. The third is in Beijing, at the Academica Sinica.

These three remain the only fieldcollected museum specimens of the Yunan...