(378) Hypocolius ampelinus.
The Grey Hypocolius.
- Hypocolius ampelinus Bonap., Consp. Av., i, p. 33G (1850) (N.E. Africa); Blanf. & Oates, i, p, 250.
Vernacular names. None recorded.
Description.—Male. From the lores, through the eye widening to a broad band on the nape black; forehead, crown, chin, cheeks, throat, the middle of the abdomen, vent, thighs and under tail-coverts pinkish cream-colour; remainder of the body plumage, wing-coverts and inner secondaries drab-grey; winglet and primary-coverts blackish, shaded with ashy and partially margined with grey; primaries black, with broad white tips shaded with grey on the first two or three; outer secondaries black, broadly edged and tipped with ashy, the black diminishing in amount on the later quills and occupying only a portion of the inner web-tail drab-grey, broadly tipped black.
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Fig. 68.—Head of H. ampelinus.
Colours of soft parts. Irides brown; bill black in the breeding season; flesh-coloured with a black tip in non-breeding season and in the young; legs, feet and claws flesh-colour.
Measurements. Length about 250 mm.; wing 100 to 110 mm.; tail about 115 mm.; tarsus about 23 mm.; culmen 15 to 16 mm.
Female. The upper plumage and the whole wing greyish isabelline, the quills shaded with brown interiorly and edged and tipped with light grey; the tail is merely brown towards the end and tipped paler; the lower plumage pinkish cream-colour, suffused with drab-grey across the breast; there is no black on head or nape.
Nestling. "A fortnight to three weeks old the first primary is almost entirely sooty, all the others being graded with the same" (Cumming).
Young male like the female but has the white wing-patch from the earliest stages of plumage.
Immature female has the secondaries tipped with white.
Distribution. Persia, working South in March to Bushire and a little later to Fao and other places on the shores of the Persian Gulf. A rare straggler down the Mekran coast and into Sind and Khelat. First recorded from North-East Africa.
