I am indebted to J. L. Gressitt of the Entomology Department of the
Bishop Museum for providing the opportunity for me to work on the
expedition and to examine and report on the material collected. Without
the help of the North Borneo Department of Agriculture, the success of
our expedition would have been restricted. The Entomologist of North
Borneo, G. R. Conway, was of great help with our logistic problems as
was the Director of the Department, Mr. E. J. H. Berwick, and the
Agronomist of Cocoa Research Station, Ed Wyrley-Birch. The Bombay Burmah
Trading Corporation, Ltd., provided facilities and transportation at
Kalabakan. Mr. Dai Rees of that corporation should be especially
mentioned. Others who helped are: J. A. Comber, Ronnie Young, Mr. and
Mrs. Horace Traulsen, Maureen Wyrley-Birch, and the Resident, Tawau,
Mr. Peter Edge. The Conservator of Forests kindly provided the necessary
permits for collecting.
Authorities of the United States National Museum and The American Museum
of Natural History generously permitted me to work at those
institutions, using their specimens for comparative studies. Other
specimens were borrowed from the Museum of Comparative Zoology,
Rijksmuseum Van Natuurlijke Historie, British Museum (Natural History),
and the Yale Peabody Museum. Dr. Alexander Wetmore, Herbert Deignan, and
Charles Vaurie helped with some of the more difficult taxonomic
problems. Specimens cited in this report are in the Bernice P. Bishop
Museum, The University of Kansas Museum of Natural History, The
University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, and the U. S. National Museum.
Richard F. Johnston and Robert M. Mengel kindly read the manuscript and
made many helpful suggestions. The latter re-read it and assisted with
the editing.
The most recent comprehensive work published previous to my preparation
of manuscript for the present account was Smythies (1960) "The Birds of
Borneo."
This report is a partial result of field work supported by a grant from
the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command,
Department of the Army, to the Bernice P. Bishop Museum for research on
ectoparasites of vertebrates. The contract numbers were
DA-MD-49-193-62-G47 and G65. The Chapman Fund of The American Museum of
Natural History met part of the cost of transporting, to and from the
United States, specimens from North Borneo collected after I left there.