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| Sillem's Mountain Finch (Leucosticte Sillemi) | ||
| A rare and
strange
bird Only two specimens have
ever been
sighted of this little bird. And the man who observed and caught the
two Mountain Finches was a Dutchman named Jerôme
Alexander Sillem (1902-1986) who
was to become the director of the Amsterdam bank Mees & Hope NV later. As a 27 year old
he
participated in an expedition in Asia. He had discovered the two birds
on the Western Plateau in Tibet at an altitude of 5000 m (or 15,000
feet). Experts assume that Sillem's
Mountain Finch is a bisexual species as it has some
similitaries
with another species called Leucosticte
brandti pallidior that
in fact embraces two genders.
Thus the bearers of our name would be something really exceptional in
the realm of nature!
When Jerôme
Alexander
discovered the birds a snow-storm
was approaching. Probably, the birds had been driven down by the
weather from even greater altitudes of the Tibetan Plateau. As the wing
of the juvenile was not yet full-grown, it is unlikely that they had
travelled far in horizontal direction. Their appearance is rather
inconspicuous, pale and not very attractive. A personal impression can
be gained at a visit to the zoological museum in Amsterdam where the
bodies are kept (see link below). Rump and underparts are grey-white,
with a slight buff tinge on the breast, the ground-colours of the
flight-feathers are drab-grey. The tail is relatively short, and the
bill is slender.
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| This is the Leucosticte Sillemi, the Sillemfinch, in a reconstruction drawing made by W. Maas in 1993 as an illustration to ta publication on thebird (supplied by Caroline Sillem). | ||
| see also: Sillem's Mountain Finch Tawny-headed Mountain Finch (Wikipedia) |
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