The Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali di Torino houses numerous specimens of birds from India, donated in 1841 by Paolo Solaroli (Elter 1986). Among these are the two syntypes of Indian Thick-knee Burhinus [= Oedicnemus] indicus Salvadori, 1866, with the registration numbers MZUT Av4086 and Av4087 (Fig. 1; Aimassi et al. 2020: 79). The type locality was only known imprecisely for many decades—Salvadori (1866: 381) mentioned ‘probabilmente dall’Imalaja’ (probably from Himalaya); Salvadori (1915: 12) ‘inviata dal Barone Solaroli da Sirdanha [sic] Monti Imalaia’ (sent by Baron Solaroli from Sirdanha [sic] Himalayan Mountains); and Peters (1934: 295) referred only to ‘India’— until Passerin d’Entrèves et al. (1995) proposed restricting the type locality to the ‘surroundings of Mussoorie, in Uttar Pradesh’, India. They cited a letter from Marquis Paolo Solaroli in the ‘fondo Ministero degli Esteri del Regno di Sardegna, Gabinetto, Lettere dei regi sudditi, Lettere ricevute, mazzo 1670’, protocol no. 71599, at the Archivio di Stato di Torino (Turin State Archives) relating to the shipment of 444 bird skins. Here, we provide reasons to revise this to the environs of Sardhana, in Uttar Pradesh.

Solaroli (1796–1878) was an Italian mercenary stationed for some time in the principality of Sirdanah /Sirdanha [= Sardhana, 29°25′N, 77°37′E], near Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. Although Sardhana was referred to as a ‘rajat at the foot of the Himalayas’ by Passerin d’Entrèves et al. (1995), it is not even close to the terai; in fact, it is slightly less than 100 km from Delhi.

There is little certainty as to where Solaroli collected the 444 specimens now largely at MZUT (335 specimens), and the only ‘new’ evidence is the letter he sent from Mussoorie (in present-day Uttarakhand). Mussoorie is c.150 km north-northeast of Sardhana. While at least some birds in the collection give it a ‘Himalayan’ feel, e.g. Bearded Vulture Gypaetus barbatus, White-collared Blackbird Turdus albocinctus, Eurasian Wren Troglodytes troglodytes, Chukar Alectoris chukar and Western Tragopan Tragopan melanocephalus, clearly indicating the collector(s) visited the Middle Himalaya, the bulk of the collection comprises common birds of the northern plains expected around Sardhana (which is not Himalayan). We contest that Sardhana must have been site of collection of most of these specimens. In particular, Burhinus indicus does not occur around Mussoorie (30°28′N, 78°04′E; c.2,000 m) in the Middle Himalaya, but is found on the Gangetic plain around Sardhana (c.225 m) ( https://ebird.org/india/map/indthk1). As such, the site from where the consignment was sent is not appropriate as the type locality here, and we recommend to revise the type locality of Burhinus [=Oedicnemus] indicus to the ‘environs of Sardhana, Uttar Pradesh’.

Figure 1.

Two syntypes of Indian Thick-knee Burhinus indicus, MZUT Av4086 (left) and MZUT Av4087 (right), in the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali di Torino (Luca Ghiraldi)