Gould's shortwing

Gould's shortwing (Heteroxenicus stellatus) is a small species of passerine bird in the family Muscicapidae. It is found in the Himalayas (mainly Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Bhutan), Yunnan and northern parts of Myanmar and Vietnam. It breeds in the eastern Himalayas in rocky areas above the tree-line and winters at lower altitude in wooded valleys.

Gould's shortwing

Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Muscicapidae
Genus: Heteroxenicus
Sharpe, 1902
Species:
H. stellatus
Binomial name
Heteroxenicus stellatus
(Gould, 1868)
Synonyms

Brachypteryx stellatus

Gould's shortwing is the only species in the genus Heteroxenicus. It was formerly placed in the genus Brachypteryx.

The common name commemorates the English ornithologist and bird artist John Gould (1804-1881).[2]

Taxonomy

The first formal description of Gould's shortwing was by the English ornithologist and bird artist John Gould in 1868 from a specimen collected in Nepal. He chose the binomial name Brachypteryx stellatus.[3]

Gould's shortwing is the only species in the genus Heteroxenicus. It was formerly placed in the genus Brachypteryx and was assigned to the thrush family Turdidae.[4] The genus Heteroxenicus had been introduced by Richard Bowdler Sharpe in 1902.[5] The genus name Heteroxenicus combines the classical Greek words heteros for "different" and xenikos for "stranger". The specific epithet stellata is from the Latin word stellatus meaning "starry" or "set with stars".[6]

There are two subspecies:[4]

  • H. s. stellatus (Gould, 1868) – central Himalayas to south China and northeast Myanmar
  • H. s. fuscus (Delacour & Jabouille, 1930) – northwest Vietnam

Description

Gould's shortwing is 12–13 cm (4.7–5.1 in) in length with a weight of 19–23 g (0.67–0.81 oz). It is chestnut coloured above and dark grey below with small white spots or stars on its belly. It has long brown legs and a black bill. The sexes are similar. Nothing is known about the nest or the eggs.[7][8]

gollark: It's easy to say that if you are just vaguely considering that, running it through the relatively unhurried processes of philosophizing™, that sort of thing. But probably less so if it's actually being turned over to emotion and such, because broadly speaking people reaaaallly don't want to die.
gollark: Am I better at resisting peer pressure than other people: well, I'd *like* to think so, but so would probably everyone else ever.
gollark: Anyway, I have, I think, reasonably strong "no genocide" ethics. But I don't know if, in a situation where everyone seemed implicitly/explicitly okay with helping with genocides, and where I feared that I would be punished if I either didn't help in some way or didn't appear supportive of helping, I would actually stick to this, since I don't think I've ever been in an environment with those sorts of pressures.
gollark: Maybe I should try arbitrarily increasing the confusion via recursion.
gollark: If people are randomly assigned (after initial mental development and such) to an environment where they're much more likely to do bad things, and one where they aren't, then it seems unreasonable to call people who are otherwise the same worse from being in the likely-to-do-bad-things environment.I suppose you could argue that how "good" you are is more about the change in probability between environments/the probability of a given real world environment being one which causes you to do bad things. But we can't check those with current technology.

References
  1. BirdLife International (2012). "Heteroxenicus stellata". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  2. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael (2003). Whose Bird? Men and Women Commemorated in the Common Names of Birds. London: Christopher Helm. pp. 145–146. ISBN 978-0-7136-6647-2.
  3. Gould, John (1868). "On four new species of birds". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London: 218.
  4. Gill, Frank; Donsker, David (eds.). "Chats, Old World flycatchers". World Bird List Version 6.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
  5. Sharpe, Richard Bowdler (1902). "Heteroxenicus". Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. 12: 55.
  6. Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. pp. 191, 365. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  7. Collar, N. "Gould's Shortwing (Heteroxenicus stellatus)". In del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; Sargatal, J.; Christie, D.A.; de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  8. Clement, Peter (2016). Robins and Chats. Helm Identification Guides. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 182–183. ISBN 978-140815596-7.
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