HAVE the EGGS of the ORANGE&Hyphen;BREASTED
HAVE THE EGGS OF THE ORANGE-BREASTED FALCON (FALCO DEIROLEUCUS) BEEN DESCRIBED? by DouglasA. BoyceJr.' School of Natural Resources HumboldtState University Arcata, California 95521 and Lloyd F. Kiff WesternFoundation of VertebrateZoology 1100 Glendon Avenue LosAngeles, California 90024 The only publisheddescription of Orange-breastedFalcon (Falcodeiroleucus) eggs knownto us is that of Coltart (1952),who presenteddetails on two setsof eggssaid to be of thisspecies collected for G. D. Smookerin Trinidad.One of thesesets, a clutchof 3 takenon 28 March 1937in the Aripo Savannah,is now in the collectionof the West- ernFoundation of VertebrateZoology (WFVZ cat. no. 15,728);the other,a setof 2 col- lectedon 21 April 1930 in the Coroni Marshes,is in the collectionof the Zoological Museum,University of Helsinki,Finland (ZMUF cat. no. 15,721). The authenticityof theseeggs has been questioned by ffrench(1973) because of their smallsize compared to the bodysize of the species.The 3 eggsin the WFVZ collection measure40.6 x 34.7, 41.8 x 35.6, and 39.9 x 34.6 mm, and the 2 eggsin the ZMUF set measure 43.0 x 35.0 and 42.2 x 34.7 mm. All of these measurements fall within the rangegiven for eggsof the AplomadoFalcon (Falco femoralis) by Bent (1938) and Brownand Amadon(1968) and are only slightlylarger than the extrememeasurements knownfor eggsof the muchsmaller Bat Falcon(Falco rufigularis) (Brown and Amadon op cit., Kiff unpubl.data). Eggs of severalfalcon species, including one of Smooker's Trinidadeggs, are shownin Figurei to illustratetheir comparativesizes. Heinroth(1922) first demonstratedthe fundamentalrelationship between egg weight andbody weight in birds,and this was further refined by Huxley(1923-1924).
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