Corvus splendens - Huiskraai
Geographical variation.
Marked, but largely clinal, involving only, tone of grey on neck and chest.
Grey of nominate splendens from much of Indian subcontinent medium ash-grey,
fawn-grey, or brown-grey; zugmayeri lrom south-west Iran, Pakistan, and north-
west India paler, pale ash-grey or pale smoke-grey when fresh, milk-grey or
dirty grey-white when worn. C. s. protegatus from Kerala (south-west India) and
Sri Lanka has grey distinctly darker, dark ash-grey to slate-grey; in insolens
from Tenasserim (peninsular Burma), grey replaced by greyish-black or sooty-
black, scarcely contrasting with remainder of body (but not glossy).
Boundaries between races not sharp, however: e.g. nominate splendens from Delhi
area averages slightly paler than birds from Bangladesh (but not as pale as
zugmayeri), and nominate splendens grades into protegatus in southern India;
birds from Rangoon area (Burma) not as black as Tcnasserim birds, about
intermediate between protegatus and typical insolens, but nearer latter.
Widely introduced or self-established in coastal areas lrom East Africa north
to Jordan and east to Australia (Meininger et al. 198o), and such birds often
difficult to assign to a race, either because they are derived from populations
intermediate between 2 races, or are a mixture of various races. Most
populations in Middle East and East Africa are nominate splendens, but
populations in Kuwait and Oman are partly zugmayeri or intermediates (Pilcher
1986), and protegatus-like bird recorded Aden (Yemen) (Meinertzhagen 1954).
Birds from Singapore dark, but less so than insolens; either derived from
protegatus or intermediate between insolens and nominate splendens.
CSR
Birds of the Western Palearctic VIII, 150