Abstract
Almost half of the 400+ species described in Félix de Azara’s “Apuntamientos para la historia natural de los páxaros del Paraguay y Rio de la Plata” were new to science at the time of its publication; however, not all of these have yet been correctly identified. Azara’s No. 21 “Gavilán pardo obscuro” has long been misidentified as a dark phase of the Short-tailed Hawk Buteo brachyurus. However, the description of plumage, jizz, habitat and measurements are inconsistent with that species and Azara’s No. 21 can, in fact, be convincingly identified as a juvenile Swainson’s Hawk Buteo swainsoni, the earliest Paraguayan report of this species. No scientific names were apparently ever based on Azara No. 21.
Highlights
Azara’s (1802, 1805a, 1805b) ornithological text “Apuntamientos para la historia natural de los páxaros del Paraguay y Rio de la Plata”, was one of the first attempts to document the avifauna of the Southern Cone of South America in a systematic way
The first author to attempt to associate the description with a known species was Berlepsch (1887), who proposed tentatively that it could be the black phase of Short-tailed Hawk Buteo brachyurus and this has been uncritically repeated by subsequent reviewers (Bertoni 1901; Laubmann 1939; Pereyra 1945)
With the exception of largely dark plumage and small size, there is no real evidence supporting the identity of this description as Short-tailed Hawk
Summary
Azara’s (1802, 1805a, 1805b) ornithological text “Apuntamientos para la historia natural de los páxaros del Paraguay y Rio de la Plata”, was one of the first attempts to document the avifauna of the Southern Cone of South America in a systematic way. Amongst these is his No 21 Gavilán pardo obscuro, a description that Sonnini (in Azara 1809) considered to be an undescribed species in his French translation of the work (correctly at the time) and for which neither Kaup (1847) nor Hartlaub (1847) were able to propose an identity.
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