The typic species of this form is the Trochilus fallax of M. Bourcier, a bird distinguished by its tawny-coloured breast, and by the white tippings of its outer tail-feathers. I wish it to be understood that I do not include in this genus the albicollis or the chionogaster, which have been inadvertently figured as pertaining to it. At the same time were I to state that the genus is confined to a single species, I believe that I should be leading ornithologists into error; for I have a specimen which, I think, will prove to belong to a second. The example in question, although bearing all the general characteristics of the D. fallax, differs in some minor details, and I shall therefore provisionally propose for it the specific name of cervina.
Dolerisca fallax
Habitat: Venezuela
Plate 56
Leucippus fallax
Buff-breasted Leucippus
Dolerisca cervina (Gould)
Habitat: Unknown
No illustrations
This new species is larger than the D. fallax in all its admeasurements, and has a less amount of white on the tips of the outer tail-feathers. In D. fallax these greyish-white tippings occupy both webs of the apical portion of each of the three outer feathers, while in the cervina the inner webs only are thus marked; these marks are about three-eighths of an inch long on the outer feather, a quarter of an inch on the next, and but a little more than an eighth on the third; the upper mandible in D. cervina is reddish brown, while in D. fallax the upper one is black. The habitat of the latter is well known to be Venezuela, but that of the former has yet to be ascertained.
Featuring all 422 illustrated species from John Gould’s A Monograph of the Trochilidæ, or Family of Humming-Birds arranged by color.
Humming-Birds