A list of the birds known from Roti and adjacent islets (Lesser Sunda Islands)

INTRODUCTION Father Verheijen (in press) has given a narrative of his visit to Roti, with a list of all birds recorded from material, personal observations, and hearsay. Although several of Verheijen's own field observations are entirely reliable, other species mentioned by him cannot be regarded as of anything but very doubtful occurrence. Therefore I have considered it useful to compile a list of those birds which are now known from collected specimens. Previous to Father Verheijen's studies, ornithological knowledge of Roti rested entirely on a visit to the island made by the anthropologist Dr. H. F. C. ten Kate in 1891 (22 August — 9 September). During his stay ten Kate did some collecting of miscellaneous zoological objects, which he forwarded to Leiden. His first consignment, containing six bird skins representing five species, became the subject of a paper by Büttikofer (1892a), which is important as the only publication specifically dealing with birds from Roti. Two further small lots of birds forwarded by ten Kate: 8 specimens in October 1892 and 10 in 1893, were not published as such, but ten Kate (1894), Finsch (1901a, 1901b), van Oort (1909, 1910) and Mees (1961a) mentioned five species in addition to the five recorded by Büttikofer. The eight specimens of ten Kate's second lot were received in spirits; apparently five of them were useless and have been thrown away, two may have been made into study-skins but are missing, and one was prepared as a skeleton. The last lot consisted of skins, but of these also some cannot now be found. This leaves a total of 15 skins and one skeleton, in 13 species, all of which will be recorded in the following list.